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66-20275
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Let there be sculpture
66-20275
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LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
»r*<?M
" "iit/'it ^^Ay-"''^,'^
THE VISITATION
LET THERE BE
SCULPTURE
by Jacob Epstein
FOUNDED 1838
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS * NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT, 1940, BY JACOB EPSTEIN
All rights reserved. TAis book, or parts thereof, must
not b® reproduced in any jorm without permission.
Designed by jRolwt Josephy
»*I»tia IN THE UNITED STAVftS Of A M I El C A
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
FOR permission to quote from letters and articles published in
numerous newspapers and periodicals, I wish to acknowledge
my gratitude both to the publishers and, in the case of signed
articles and letters, to the authors. My thanks are due to: the
Birmingham Mail, the British Medical Journal, the Catholic Times,
the Daily Express, the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph, the Eve
ning Standard (including an article from the Pall Mall Gazette,
now amalgamated with the Evening Standard), the Manchester
GiMrdian, the Nation, Neptune, the New Age, the New English
Weekly, the News Chronicle, the New Statesman, the New York
Evening Post, the Observer, Picture Post, Reynolds'* Illustrated
Weekly, the Spectator, the Star, the Sunday Dispatch, the Sunday
Pictorial, the Sunday Times, the London Times, Truth, the Uni
verse; and to William Heinemann, Ltd., for permission to quote
from Ibsen's When We Dead Awaken,
Also to the following people, who have given their personal per
mission to quote their words from the sources mentioned above: L.
B, Powell, Professor D, S. MacColl, Sir Muirhead Bone, Holbrook
Jackson, Mary Borden, Pierre Jeannerat, Sir Eric Maclagan,
Richard Sickert, Sir Kenneth Clark, G. F. Hill, H. S. Goodhart-
Rendel, J, B, Manson, T, W, Earp, Sir Edwin Lutyens, R. R.
Tatlock, Sir Charles Allom, W, H. Coatc, Sir Charles Holden,
James Bone, Sir Reginald Blomfield, Charles Marriott (article in
the Outlook), J* Middleton Murry, Sander Pierron, Hugh Gordon
Porteus, William McCance, Raymond Mortimer, Jan Gordon, R.
H, Wilenskl, Bernard Shaw, H. G, Wells, Sir John Lavery, Ezra
Pound (article in the Bgoitt), Rev. Albert Beldea, Antony Blunt,
Rev. L. Weatherhead, John Macadam, Rev. Edward ShilHto, Law
rence Binyon, Sir George Hill, Robert Jessel* and John Gibbons,
CONTENTS
i New York (1880-1902) 3
n Paris— Aa Apprenticeship. London— Days of
Struggle (1902-1905) 15
in A Thirty Years' War— The Strand Statues
(1908-1937) 24
iv Contacts and Encounters (1908-1912) 33
v The Tomb of Oscar Wilde (1912-1913) 43
vi Abstractionists and Futurists. A Philosopher
Friend (1913-1917) 49
vii Portraits 58
vm My First Statue of Christ (1917-1920) 92
ix On the Edge of London's Bohemia 99
x The Hudson Memorial: the "Rima" Row (1925) 105
xi New York Revisited (1927) 114
xn "Day" and "Night" "Genesis." Old Testament
Drawings (1929-1933)
xni "Behold the Man." "Consummatum Est" (1935-
1937)
xiv "Les Fleurs du Mai" (1938) 142
vii
viii CONTENTS
xv "Adam" (1939) 150
xvi Children 157
xvn African and Other "Primitive" Carvings 161
xvin The British Museum and Greek Sculpture 167
xix Journalists and the Jew. Dog Eats Dog 176
xx I Listen to Music 188
xxi The Position of the Artist. Sculptors of Today 194
xxn My Place in Sculpture 2 10
APPENDIX
i The Strand Statues Controversy 217
n The Tomb of Oscar Wilde, Attack and Defense 254
in "Mr. Epstein and the Critics" by T. E, Hulmc 271
iv The Statue of Christ 278
v The Muirhead Bone "Memorandum" on the
Hudson Memorial 288
vi The Battle of "Day" and "Night" 300
vii "Genesis" and the Journalists 308
vni "Behold the Man" 320
ix "Consmmmtum Est" 3 3 1
x "Adam" 34^
xi Catalogue of the CMef Works of Jacob Epstein 354
381
ILLUSTRATIONS
The Visitation Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
Woman md Child (the Strand Statues) 26
Nan 36
Israfel 36
Dolores 50
Joseph Conrad 64
George Bernard Shaw 64
Albert Einstein 68
Admiral Lord Fisher 68
Haile Selassie^ Emperor of Abyssinia 74
JR. B, Cunninghame-Graham 80
The $th Duke of Marlborongh 86
The Christ 94
Rimar-the W. H. Hudson Memorial ' 106
Madonna and Child 1 14
Samuel Alexander 122
JohnDewey 121
Day 128
Night 128
Genesis 132
Behold the Mm 136
k
x ILLUSTRATIONS
rACING J»AGE
Consummation Est 140
Adam 152
Putti (Peggy -Jean) 158
The Sick Child (Peggy-Jean) 158
Lydia 164
The Girl from Senegal 1 80
Mrs. Epstein in Mantilla 190
Mrs. Epstein (mask) 190
Joan Greenwood 202
Head of an Infant 202
Romilly 202
T&e Weeping Woman 212
Moysheh Oyved 212
7#£0# Kramer 230
Rabindranath Tagore ajo
Kathleen 146
Mr, Cramer 246
262
280
Robeson 280
(mask) 196
^M 296
L0r J Beaver brook 3 1 2
Dr.AdolpbS. Oka 312
Shelley 328
Bernard vm Dieren
Weizmmn
LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
CHAPTER ONE
New York
( 1880-1902 )
MY earliest recollections are of the teeming East Side where
I was born.
This Hester Street and its surrounding streets were the most
densely populated of any city on earth; and looking back at it, I
realize what I owe to its unique and crowded humanity. Its swarms
of Russians, Poles, Italians, Greeks, and Chinese lived as much in
the streets as in the crowded tenements; and the sights, sounds,
and smells had the vividness and sharp impact of an Oriental city.
From one end to the other Hester Street was an open-air mar
ket. The streets were lined with pushcarts and peddlers, and the
crowd that packed the sidewalk and roadway compelled one to
move slowly*
As a child I had a serious illness that lasted for two years or
more* I have vague recollections of this illness and of my being
carried about a great deal I was known as the "sick one." Whether
this illness gave me a twist away from ordinary paths, I don't
know; but it is possible. Sometimes my parents wondered at my
bekg different from the other children, and would twit me about
my lack of interest in a great many matters which perhaps I should
have been interested in, but just wasn't. I have never found out
that there was in my family an artist or anyone interested in the
arts or sciences, and 1 have never been sufficiently interested in
my "family tree" to bother. My father and mother had come to
3
4 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
America on one of those great waves of immigration that followed
persecution and pogroms in Czarist Russia and Poland. They had
prospered, and I can recall that we had Polish Christian servants
who still retained peasant habits, speaking no English, wearing
kerchiefs, and going about on bare feet. These servants remained
with us until my brother Louis, my older brother, began to grow
up; and then with the sudden dismissal of the Polish girls, I began
to have an inkling of sexual complications. My elder sister, Ida,
was a handsome, full-bosomed girl, a brunette; and I can recall a
constant coming and going of relatives and their numerous chil
dren. This family life I did not share. My reading and drawing
drew me away from the ordinary interests, and I lived a great
deal in the world of imagination, feeding upon any book that fell
into my hands. When I had got hold of a really thick book like
Hugo's Les Miserable* 1 was happy, and would go off into a cor
ner to devour it,
I cannot recall a period when I did not draw; and at school
the studies that were distasteful to me, mathematics and grammar,
were retarded by the indulgence of teachers who were proud of
my drawing faculties, and passed over my neglect of uncongenial
subjects. Literature and history interested me immensely, and
whatever was graphic attracted my attention. Later, I went to
the Art Students' League uptown and drew from models and
painted a little, but my main studies remained in this quarter where
I was born and brought up* When my parents moved to a more
respectable and duller part of the city, it held no interest what
ever for me. I hired a room ia Hester Street in a wooden, ram
shackle building that seemed to date back at least a hundred years
and, from my window overlooking the market, made drawings
daily, I could look down upoa the moving mass below and watch
them making purchases, bartering, and gossiping. Opposite stood
carpenters, washerwomen, and day workers, gathered with their
tools in readiness to be hired, Every type could be found here,
and for the purpose of drawing I would follow a character until
his appearance was sufficiently impressed on my mind for me to
NEW YORK 5
make a drawing. A character who interested me particularly was
a tall, lean, bearded young man, with the ascetic face of a religious
fanatic, who wandered through the streets lost in a profound mel
ancholy. His hair grew to his shoulders, and upon this was perched
an old bowler hat. He carried a box in one hand, and as he passed
the pushcarts, the vendors would put food into his box, here an
apple, there a herring. He was a holy man, and I followed him
into synagogues, where he brooded and spent his nights and days.
On one occasion I was taken to see the Chief Rabbi, a man of
great piety who had been brought from Poland to act as the
Chief Rabbi; but, as New York Jews do not acknowledge a cen
tral authority, he never attained this position. An attempt to use
him to monopolize the Kosher meat industry was indignantly
rejected. This sage and holy man lived exactly as he would in a
Polish city, with young disciples, in ringlets ($&ye$), who at
tended him as he was very infirm, lifting him into his chair and
out of it, and solicitous of his every movement. The patriarchal
simplicity of this house much impressed me. The New York
Ghetto at that time was a city transplanted from Poland. Parallel
with all this was the world of the "intelligentsia,'* the students,
journalists, scholars, advanced people, socialists, anarchists, free
thinkers, and even "free lovers." Newspapers in Yiddish, Yiddish
theaters, literary societies, clubs of all lands for educational pur
poses, night classes abounded; and I helped organize an exhibition
of paintings and drawings by young men of the quarter. There
existed a sort of industry in enlarging and coloring photographs,
working them up in crayon; and there were shops that did a thriv
ing trade in this. I had student friends who, to earn money, put
their hands to this hateful work, and by industry could earn
enough to go on with more serious studies. I never had to do this,
as I could always sell my drawings,
I kept the room on Hester Street until, on returning to it one
morning, I found it burned to the ground, and my charred draw
ings (hundreds of them), floating about in water with dead cats*
I had to find another room, this time in a tenement with clothing
6 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
workers, where I restarted my studies. I never remember giving
up this second room; perhaps because of that it has returned to
me in dreams with a strange persistence. Even in Paris and in Lon
don, in my dreams I find myself in the room as I left it, filled
with drawings of the people of the East Side.
The many races in this quarter were prolific. Children by hun
dreds played upon the hot pavements and in the alleys. Upon the
fire escapes and the roofs the tenement-dwellers slept for coolness
in summer. I knew well the roof life in New York, where all East
Side boys flew kites; I knew the dock life on the East and West
sides; I swam in the East River and the Hudson. To reach the
river the boys from the Jewish quarter would have to pass through
the Irish quarter; and that meant danger and fights with the gangs
of that quarter, the children of Irish immigrants.
The Jewish quarter was bounded on one side by the Bowery,
At the time, this street was one long line of saloons, crowded at
night by visitors to the city, sailors, and prostitutes. As a boy I
could watch through the doors at night the strange garish perform
ers, singers and dancers; and the whole turbulent night life was,
to my growing eager mind, of never-ending interest I recall Steve
Brodie's saloon with its windows filled with photographs of famous
boxers, and the floor inlaid with silver dollars. For a boy a tour
along the Bowery was full of excitement. When you reached
Chinatown, crooked Mott Street leading to Pell Street, you could
buy a stick of sugar cane for one cent and, chewing it, look into
the Chinese shop windows, or even go into the temple, all scarlet
and gilding, with gilded images. The Chinamen had a curious way
of slipping into their houses, suddenly, as into holes; and I used to
wonder at the yoting men with smooth faces like girls* Chinese
children were delightful when you saw them, but no Chinese
women were to be seen. Along the west front, on the Hudson
side, you saw wagons being loaded with large bunches of bananas
and great piles of melons. Bananas would drop off the overloaded
wagons; you picked them up, and continued until you came to the
open-air swimming baths with delightful sea water. I was a great
NEW YORK 7
frequenter of these swimming places, and went there until they
shut down in November for the winter,
At this period New York was the city of ships of which Whit
man wrote. I haunted the docks and watched the ships from all
over the world being loaded and unloaded. Sailors were aloft in
the rigging, and along the docks horses and mules drew heavy
drays; oyster boats were bringing their loads of oysters and clams;
and the shrieks and yells of sirens and the loud cries of overseers
made a terrific din. At the Battery, newly arrived immigrants, their
shoulders laden with packs, hurried forward; and it must have been
with much misgiving that they found their first steps in the New
World greeted with the hoots and jeers of hooligans. I can still
see them hurrying to gain the Jewish quarter and finding refuge
among friends and relatives. I often traveled the great stretch of
Brooklyn Bridge, which I crossed hundreds of times on foot, and
watched the wonderful bay with its steamers and ferryboats. The
New York of the pre-skyscraper period was my formation ground.
I knew all its streets and the water-side; I made excursions into
the suburbs: Harlem, Yonkers, Long Island; Coney Island I knew
well, and Rockaway, where I bathed in the surf, I explored Staten
Island, then not yet built upon, and the Palisades with their wild
rocks leading down to the Hudson River.
Early on I saw the plastic quality in colored people and had
friends among them; and later was to work from colored models
and friends, including Paul Robeson, whose splendid head I
worked from in New York, I tried to draw Chinamen in their
quarter, but the Chinese did not like being drawn and would
immediately disappear when they spotted me. The Italian Mulberry
Street was like Naples, concentrated in one swarming district.
Within easy reach of one another, I could see the most diverse
life from many lands, and I absorbed material which was invalu
able.
At this time I was a tremendous reader, and there were periods
when I would go off to Central Park and find a secluded place
far away from crowds and noise. There I would give myself up
8 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
to solitary reading for the day, and come back home burned by
the sun and filled with ideas from Dostoevski's Brothers Karam&->
zov, or Tolstoy's novels. Also I absorbed the New Testament and
Whitman's Leaves of Grass, all read out of doors among the rocks
and lakes of the Park. It was only later I read the English poets,
Coleridge, Blake, and Shelley, and still later Shakespeare. During
my student days at the League, I would drop into Durand RuePs
gallery on Fifth Avenue, and there see the works of many of the
impressionist painters, which were not so sought after in those
days. I saw splendid Manets, Renoirs, and Pissarros; and Durand
Ruel himself, noticing my interest, gave me special opportunities
to see pictures which went back to Europe and are now in the
Louvre and the National Gallery. I was very well acquainted with
the work not only of the American artists who were influenced
by the impressionists, but also with the works of the older men
who now constitute the "Old Masters" of America— Window
Homer, George Inness, Homer Martin, Albert Ryder, and
Thomas Eakins. The sincerity of these men impressed me, and
my boyhood enthusiasms have been justified by time,
I began to feel at this period that I could more profoundly ex
press myself and give greater reality to my drawings by studying
sculpture. I had been drawing and reading to excess, sometimes
in dim light, and my eyes had suffered from the strain, so that
sculpture gave me relief, and the actual handling of clay was a
pleasure.
Naturally my family did not approve of all that I did, although
they saw that I had what might be called a special bent. My turn
ing to sculpture was to them mysterious* Later they could not un
derstand why I did certain things any more than the critics who
profess to see in me a dual nature— one the man of talent, and the
other the wayward eccentric, or the artist who desires to $pat@r*
What chiefly concerned my family was why I did things which
could not possibly bring me in any money, and they deplored
this mad or foolish streak in me. They put it down to the per
versity that made me a lonely boy, going off on my own to tho
NEW YORK 9
woods with a book, and not turning up to meals, and later making
friends with Negroes and anarchists.
My grandmother on my father's side was a cantankerous old
creature who swore that we children were going to the dogs,
and were goyim. She continued traveling between Poland and
New York, as she declared she would not die in a pagan land.
But, alas for her wish, it was in New York she died.
My grandparents on my mother's side were a dear old couple,
whose kindness and patriarchal simplicity I remember well. Every
Friday evening the children would go to them to get their bless
ing. Before the Sabbath candles they would take our heads in their
hands and pronounce a blessing on each one of us in turn. Then
followed gifts of fruit and sweets.
I was one of a large family, a third child, and my elder brother
Louis was at all times sympathetic and helpful. Of my brothers,
Hyam was an exceptionally powerful youth, a giant of strength,
headstrong and with a personality that got him into scrapes. My
sister Ghana, a beautiful fair-haired girl, with a candid, sweet
nature, was a great favorite of mine; and we often went out to
gether. My father and mother in the evenings would lie in bed
reading novels in Yiddish; my father would read aloud, and I often
stayed awake listening to these extravagant romances. Saturday in
the synagogue was a place of ennui for me, and the wailing prayers
would get on my nerves; my one desire would be to make excuses
to get away. The picturesque shawls with the strange faces under
neath held my attention only for a short while, then the tedium
of the interminable services would drown every other emotion.
Certainly I had no devotional feelings; and later, with my reading
and free-thinking ideas, I dropped all practice of ceremonial forms
and, as my parents were only conventionally interested in reli
gion, they did not insist I was confirmed at the age of thirteen
in the usual manner, but how I ever got through this trying ordeal
I cannot now imagine. The Passover Holidays always interested
me for the picturesque meal ceremonies. I remember my father,
who was "somebody" in the synagogue, bringing home with him
io LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
one of the poor men who waited outside to be chosen to share the
Passover meal These patriarchal manners I remember well, al
though there was about them an air of bourgeois benevolence
which was somewhat comic. The earnestness and simplicity of the
old Polish-Jewish manner of living has much beauty in it, and an
artist could make it the theme of very fine works. This life is fast
disappearing on contact with American habits, and it is a pity that
there is no Rembrandt of today to draw his inspiration from it
before it is too late.
My parents did not discourage me, but could not understand
how I could make a living by art. Their idea of an artist was a
person who was condemned to starvation. Sculpture became to
me an absorbing interest. When I started seriously to work I felt the
inadequacies of the opportunity to study. For one thing, only a
night class existed in New York. Also, there was very little antique
sculpture to be seen, and modern sculpture hardly existed. I longed
to go to Paris, and my opportunity came when I met Hutchins
Hapgood, the writer, who was very much interested in the East
Side. He asked me to illustrate a book which he had written about
it. I drew for him the poets, scholars, actors, and playwrights,
and also made some drawings of the people.
I remember well the great actor Jacob Adler, at whose flat I
called to make a drawing of him. He was surrounded by a house
ful of dependents of ail kinds, apart from his numerous family;
and the confusion and excitement were immense* Finding a clean
collar out of bags that contained hundreds of collars took up most
of the time. Adler had a head like those you see in Japanese prints,
long and white, and with heavy, camelion-like eyelids. This Jewish
actor had a court, and when you saw him in the streets he was
preceded and followed by his fans. He lived in public. I also drew
Jacob Gordin, who wrote plays about Jewish life which had a
strong Ibsen flavor. He was a heavy, bearded man, whom I recall
reading to an audience one of his plays, sitting informally at a
table, smoking a cigar.
In their dressing rooms, I drew Kessler, the actor, also Mos-
NEW YORK ii
cowitch, and the poets Lessin and Morris Rosenfeld, who had
spent his early life in tailors' shops.
I was known in the market, and wherever I took up a position
to draw I was looked upon sympathetically, and I had no difficulty
in finding models. Jewish people look upon the work of an artist
as something miraculous, and love watching him even though they
may be extremely critical I sometimes think I should have re
mained in New York, the material was so abundant. Wherever
one looked there was something interesting— a novel composition,
wonderful effects of lighting at night, and picturesque and hand
some people. Rembrandt would have delighted in the East Side,
and I am surprised that nothing has come out of it, for there is
material in New York far beyond anything that American painters
hunt for abroad.
I took this East Side drawing work very seriously, and my draw
ings were not just sketches. With Gussow, my Russian artist
friend, I drew the life of the East Side, and one or two other artists
joined us, so that we might have developed a school had we kept
on. Since then 1 know of no one except John Sloan and George
Luks who were inspired by New York life,
1 should like to recover some of those drawings I made of East
Side life, but I understand they were dispersed in sales, and per
haps destroyed. I also drew for periodicals, and the Century Com
pany purchased drawings from me. I could have remained in
America and become one of the band, already too numerous, of
illustrators; but that was not my ambition, and at the school I felt
something of a fish out of water. The art students' life was dis
tasteful to me. I could not join in their rags and their beer, and
their bad jokes got cm my nerves. Nevertheless, there were stu
dents who purchased my studies from the model for a dollar or
two, and I was especially friendly with James Carroll Beckwith,
an American painter who was the drawing teacher at the League.
He was sympathetic to me, and very much interested in what I
told him and showed him of the East Side life, which to the up-
towncr was like the life of the jungle for strangeness,
12 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
A great friend was James Kirke Paulding, a man of fine literary
discernment, and a friend of Abraham Cahan, the editor of Vor-
warts. Paulding was in the habit of reading to four or five of us
boys on a Sunday morning, and this was my first introduction to
Conrad's work. In this way I heard The Nigger of the Narcissus
and Typhoon, also most of Turgenev. I attended concerts of sym
phonic music, and went to the Metropolitan Opera House and
heard Wagner's Ring, naturally from the gallery, miles away from
the stage. Also I went to political meetings, where I heard Prince
Kropotkin and Eugene Debs, also Henry George, the Single-
Taxer. I observed, drew a great deal, and dreamed a great deal
more. In connection with political meetings and what would now
be called "left wing" sympathies and friends, I was an observer
only, never a participator, as my loyalties were all for the practice
of art, and I have always grudged the time that is given to anything
but that. This is not to say that I am a believer in the "ivory tower"
theory. On the contrary, a wide knowledge of men and events
seems to me necessary to the artist, but participation and action
in political events and movements must remain a matter of per
sonal predilection. In this connection I think of Courbet, whose
life was embittered and whose work suffered because of the part
he took ia the Commune.
As we are living in a world that is changing rapidly, I may
be compelled to modify this attitude and plump for direct par
ticipation and action.
My people were not, as has been stated, poor. On the contrary,
they were fairly well off, and as the family was large I saw a great
deal of Jewish orthodox life, traditional and narrow. As my
thoughts were elsewhere, this did not greatly influence me, but
I imagine that the feeling I have for expressing a human point of
view, giving human rather than abstract implications to my work,
comes from these early formative years. I saw so much that called
for expression, that I can draw upon it now if I wish to.
I was not altogether a city boy, and my excursions to the coun
try outside New York bred in me a delight in outdoors* In this
NEW YORK 13
connection I well remember that one winter my friend Gussow
and I hired a small cabin on the shores of Greenwood Lake, in
the state of New Jersey. In this mountain country I spent a winter
doing little but tramping through snow-clad forests, cutting fire
wood, cooking meals, and reading. To earn a little money we
both helped to cut the ice on the lake, a work which lasted about
two weeks. This was very hard but congenial work. We were
taken to the ice fields by sledges drawn by a team of horses in the
early morning over the hard-frozen lake, and returned in the eve
ning on the sledges, when we saw wonderful snow views of
mountainsides ablaze with sunset colors. It was a physical life full
of exhilaration and interest. At this place lived a couple with whom
I became very friendly, a Mr. and Mrs. Wells. Mr. Wells made
photographs of visitors for a living during the summer, and in the
winter he painted. His wife, a little Welsh woman, had psychic
powers, and she prophesied a great future for me, so Wells in
formed me. This couple were looked upon by the villagers as
queer. They were the only persons in the pkce who took an in
terest in art or in anything but village life. It was rather a degen
erate place altogether, where there had been a great deal of
inbreeding, as only three family names existed.
After this winter at Greenwood Lake I determined to work
at sculpture, I entered a foundry for bronze casting and attended
a modeling class at night at the League. George Grey Baxnard
was the teacher. The class was mostly made up of sculptors' as
sistants, and we had to have some ardor to put in an evening's
modeling after a hard day's work in ateliers and workshops.
Barnard would come one evening of the week to give us criti
cisms* but he rarely got through a full class of students. He would
look at the study and give you a penetrating glance (he had a
cast in his eye), and then start his talk, in which he would lose
himself, usually, for the rest of the evening. The students would
gather round Mm, and as he was a man of great earnestness, he
was very impressive. Barnard was ascetic in his habits, and hated
the action that his students drank or were at all Bohemian. Later,
i4 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
when I was to meet him in London and lunch with him, he thought
it was a concession, as he was on holiday, to let me have wine, I
knew his early work, and at that time he was the only American
sculptor one could have any respect for.
I met Tom Eakins, but as a sculptor he impressed me as being
too dry and scientific, and I looked forward to the day when I
would be able to see the Ancients and Rodin. 1 longed to see
originals of Michelangelo and Donatello, and Europe meant the
Louvre and Florence.
There has been a tremendous impetus given to American sculp
ture since I was a boy in New York, and numerous commissions
are given to sculptors; but of the lasting value of this renaissance
of sculpture, I am unable to judge from here. Mountains have
been carved, and on reading of these tremendous-sounding events,
I imagined that I might have played a part in all this. But it was
another destiny that called me, and I have had to create heroic
works from time to time in my studio, without commissions and
with little or no encouragement from official bodies,
Native American sculptors did not give one much inspiration,
and at that time no one thought of Mexican or pre-Columbian
Indian work. The fact was the interest in early American Conti
nental sculpture came from Europe. By a sort of reaction American
artists now try hard to be American.
My desire now was to get to Park* With the money from my
drawings for Hapgood's book, I bought a passage for France.
With the unthinking heedlessness of youth, 1 can recall climbing
the gangway to the vessel that was to take me away from America
for a period of twenty-five years* When I reached the top of the
gangway, my mother ran after me and embraced me for the last
time.
One night in March, 1913, in Paris, I dreamed of my mother,
and immediately received news of her early death*
CHAPTER TWO
Paris -An Apprenticeship.
Londn - Days of Struggle
• J OO
( 1902-1905 )
ON my first walk out in Paris to see Notre Dame and the
Seine, I passed over a bridge where right in the center was
a small building, the morgue; and I had to regret the morbid curi
osity that took me into that tragic building. On the second day
I went with a great procession to Emile Zola's funeral at the
Cimeti&re Montmartre, and witnessed the clashes between the
gendarmes and anti-Semites. Visits to the Louvre opened my eyes.
The great storehouse of painting and sculpture held me for days
on end. The thrill of crossing the Pont des Arts to the Louvre!
Probably a student of today would be admonished by his abstrac
tionist master to jump into the Seine rather than do that In my
prowlings through the Louvre, I discovered works which were
not at all famous then, but have since come into their own: early
Greek work, Cyclades sculpture, the bust known as the Lady of
Elchc, and the limestone bust of Akenaton. And at the Trocad6ro
was a mass of primitive sculpture none too well assembled (as our
British Museum collection is still). There was also the Musee
Cernusci with its Chinese collection. What a wonderful city for
a young student to wander about in, with something interesting
in every part, except the quarter round the Arc de Triomphe, the
£lys6es; that was always and still is a desert of boring streets. At
*5
16 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
that time I never went to cafes. I had not the money to spend
there, nor had I the inclination. I concentrated entirely on my
studies with a fanatical zeal. I worked at the school with a sort of
frenzy. I hurled myself at the clay. For relaxation I went to the
lovely Luxembourg Gardens, with its statues of the queens of
France, to listen on Sunday afternoons to the band. 1 shared a
studio with my New York friend, Bernard Gussow, In the Rue
Belloni, in a rambling block of buildings behind the Gare Mont*
parnasse. Our food we bought in a nearby cook shop in the Rue
de la Gait6 in the popular working quarter, and for a change in
the evenings we walked to a Russian students' restaurant near the
Jardin des Plantes. Here for about one franc and a half you could
get a meal, mostly kasha. Bread was free. Russian tea was the only
drink. The Russian students who frequented this place ran It
without waiters in the cafeteria style of today. The light frequently
failed, and candles were brought In. Russian refugees from Czar-
dom ate the bread of exile here* As Gussow and I were the only
"foreigners," we were sometimes regarded with suspicion, and on
one occasion a Russian suddenly started denouncing us as spies*
He seemed to be drank. Not much notice was taken of him* and
he eventually calmed down. In the Rue Belloni studios, only the
Frenchmen had mistresses, and they nattrally laughed at us Ameri
cans and English who seemed able to do without* For one thing,
the mistress was also the model, and we "foreigners" had to pose
for each other and mark tap the hours on the walls. Strange pro
ceedings! I had been only three or four days in Paris* and was
eager to enter the Beaux Arts School With hardly any French
at my command, I applied for admission, and was placed with
other students in an amphitheater, to construct a figure from the
living model
I had had practice in modeling, and set to work with confidence.
I passed the test and entered one of the three modeling ateliers,
one under an old man, Thomas by name. The usual ragging of stu
dents1 took place, and a deaf and dumb Frenchman was put tap
to hold a boxing match with me, He was short and very power-
PARIS AND LONDON 17
ful, and I saw that I had a very formidable customer to deal with.
He came at me grunting as an animal might. Luckily I hit him
first, and with the French students howling that I was taking the
aff air too seriously, the combat finished.
The "foreigners" were few and unpopular, and it was not
unusual for a French student to turn on a foreigner and ask him
why he didn't stay in his own country. On Monday the massier
of the class would appear with a girl. She would strip and the
students would vote to have her. Every week the massier •, a genu
ine apache type from the Butte, appeared with a new girl, who
would be accepted and generally traded during the morning, to
the students. After Monday the massier would disappear, making
only a pretense of working. The week would commence with
numbers of students present, and as new students had to take
back places, one was so far away from the model it was a case
of running long distances, back and forth, to get anything; but
by about Wednesday most of the students had dropped out, and
one could get quite close and see very well.
My mornings were spent in modeling from life. I consumed a
hasty lunch which I brought with me, and then went into the
carving class, and also drew from the Michelangelo casts, of which
there was a room full. In carving there was practically no instruc
tion; we were left alone to do pretty well what we pleased. Advan
tage was taken of this by two or three French professional marble
carvers, who came in and got what was a studio and material free
of charge, made small copies of Italian Renaissance heads (such as
you see in shops on the Boulevard des Italiens), and then smuggled
these carvings out under their overcoats.
One morning I decided to attend the anatomy lecture, and with
a crowd of other students of all classes, listened to a lecture with
a corpse as model When a green arm was handed around for in
spection I nearly fainted, and left the class never to return. I always
felt ashamed of this episode, as I knew that Michelangelo and all
great Renaissance artists had made intensive research from ca
davers, until years later I read in an account of the Ingres atelier,
i8 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
that Ingres himself could never stand dissection. He even objected
to a skeleton being in his classroom, and would not enter it until
the skeleton had been removed. There are infinite modes of expres
sion in the world of art, and to insist that only by one road can
the artist attain his ends is to limit him. The academic mind vio
lates this freedom of the artist to express himself as he knows best.
Personally I have always been for freedom of expression, and I
am amused at the intolerance of some of our later abstractionists,
who, claiming the utmost freedom of expression for themselves, yet
look with disdain upon all who diverge from them, I dare say to
the dancing dervish the monotonous twirlings have their ecstasy,
but not to the onlookers.
I had worked for a spell of about six months at the Beaux Arts,
when one Monday morning the period of the Prix de Rome Con-
cours commenced, and the new students were supposed to fag
for the men who entered Concours— carry clay and stands to
the loges, and wait upon these immured geniuses. This would have
completely cut my morning's work, so I refused point blank. The
French students were astonished, and could hardly believe their
ears. I was all the more determined as there were plenty of gardicns
(uniformed assistants) to fetch and carry.
When I returned to the atelier next morning, the saidy I had
begun lay in a ruined mass on the ground, 1 built up a new study,
but the following morning it was again on the ground The French
men stood silently around watching me. I said nothing. Picking
up and shouldering my modeling stand, 1 went over to the Julian
Academy.
My stay at the Beaux Arts, though it ended so badly, had given
me training in modeling for six months, and besides this I spent
the afternoons drawing from the Michelangelo casts, and carv
ing in marble in the marble atelier. It was good training, although
one learned more from capable students than from the masters,
who seemed just men with sinecure jobs.
At Julian's things went better. One paid a fee for the term,
but there were fewer students and no routine academy habits, I
PARIS AND LONDON 19
worked hard, in a sustained explosion of energy; and I remember
a Czech student who deplored my ardor and prophesied that I
would wear myself out early.
I thought one week of going into the life class and drawing
from the model. This particular atelier was under the great Jean
Paul Laurens, and his habit was to go from drawing to drawing
with the students following him, and he would give criticisms.
When Jean Paul sat down on my stool he looked at my drawing,
then at the model, looked up at me, and then got up and passed
on. A silent criticism! It is interesting to recall here that this Jean
Paul Laurens was on Le Comite d'Esthetique de la Prefecture de
la Seine, which condemned my Oscar Wilde monument in 1912.
One day a German student pulled the model about brutally,
a timid girl too frightened to protest. When I asked him why
he behaved like that he was astonished. Why, in Germany, he
said, we give them den Fuss, accompanying the words with an
appropriate gesture.
On one occasion I watched (it was more of a spectacle than
anything instructive), the great Lougereau criticism in drawing.
The old man, very feeble, would be assisted by two students into
his chair and out, and an awed assemblage of French students
would follow him. It must be remembered that his pictures sold
for many thousands of dollars in America, and it is an ironical
fact that Henri Rousseau declared that it was his ambition to paint
like him. After one or two criticisms from the master at Julian's,
I gave up taking criticism, and in my impatience always covered
my figure when the master came in. He noticed me doing this
one day and referred in an audible tone to uce smuage Americam"
I can recall that at the end of the session, in fact long before the
session ended, almost all of the students got busy on their prepara
tions for the Bai des Quatres Arts, and they dropped all work
for the floats and scenic effects of that great occasion. I went to
this uproarious, blasting saturnalia and turned out with the rest
in the daylight, with nude girls astride the cab horses. I remember
the amused greetings of the Parisian work-people who hailed tins
20 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
strange company of revelers debouching through Paris en route for
the Place St. Michel, where we dispersed
This whole student period in Paris that I look back upon now,
I passed in a rage of work; I was aflame with ardor and worked
in a frenzied, almost mad manner, achieving study after study,
week after week, always destroying it at the end of the week, to
begin a new one the following Monday. Little outside sculpture
interested me. I heard music sometimes of a Sunday afternoon at
symphony concerts, listened to Paderewski, and heard Richard
Strauss conduct, and also heard the new opera, FelUas et
M£lisande. I saw Isadora Duncan dance to the Seventh Symphony.
She looked puny at the Trocad6ro with a full-sized orchestra on
a vast stage. After a Sunday passed in the woods of Chaville, I
would return to the modeling class and no one outstripped me in
ardor. The massier of the class, a certain Cladel, of the well-known
family of Cladel, would sit perched upon a high stool, yards away
from the model, tinkering with the clay, He would watch me
darting in and out of the stands to get different, almost simul
taneous, views of the model, and remarked facetiously about such
unorthodox behavior. I would throw back at him my contempt
for a f eUow who thought he could do sculpture sitting on a high
stool One very Assyrian bearded student asked me to see Ms work
at home* When I arrived I saw a study hardly begun* He then
said, "Would you do a study for me so that I can show it to my
family?" He explained that when, he had a model in his room it
was impossible for him to work. He thought nothing of palming
off on his family in the provinces a work done by someone else,
Another student, an American, was a champion boxer, but a
very poor sculptor. He was wealthy, and French girls would come
into the atelier and wait for him to get through his morning's
work, and go off with him. This man visited me later in London,
coming over with a polo team* He was still the hopeless amateur
sculptor, and his athletic vigor had woefully diminished.
•During all this period I was sustained by a wonderful health
and strength. When I left the school and attempted working on
PARIS AND LONDON 21
my own I was not at all clear in my mind as to how to work out
my ideas for sculpture. I started two large works, one of which I
remember was a "group of sun-worshipers" which I should have
kept. I have since seen early Egyptian figures which bear a re
markable resemblance to this early group of mine. This and an
other heroic-sized group I destroyed. I was completely at a loss
as to how to work out my ideas. I had, so it seemed to me, come
to a dead end in Paris. I felt that if I went somewhere else and got
into new surroundings, I would make a new start. It was in this
mood that I debated in my mind whether to return to America or
go elsewhere, perhaps to London.
While I was at work at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, I was asked
to dinner by a Belgian, Victor Dave by name, a publisher and
anarchist, who, for his activity in anarchist propaganda, had suf
fered imprisonment for two years. He had been associated with
Mikhail Bakunin. I was very cordially received by Victor Dave
and his wife in their Passy flat, and there I met the Scottish lady
whom I later married. I was invited to London and met friends
with whom I went on a boating trip up the Thames, and also on
what would now be called a hike, up Snowden, I recall this walking
trip tip the wild Welsh mountains, and how the mountain grandeur
and loneliness impressed me.
When thinking of leaving Paris, I determined to go to London
and see If I could settle down and work there. My first impres
sions of the English were of a people with easy and natural man
ners and great courtesy; and a visit to the British Museum settled
the matter for me, as I felt that I would like to have a very good
look around at leisure.
From Paris I arrived in London and found a studio in the Cam-
den Town quarter. After a day in the studio I would go to Hyde
Park of an evening and listen to the orators at the Marble Arch.
London of that period was, as I recall it, more racy; and the types
in the Park, peculiar to the Cockney, interested me, amused me,
One saw scenes that often were of a Hogarthian nature. This has
disappeared, like the old-time music halk
22 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
I met John Fothergill, of whom I did a portrait in crayon. He
bought, and had his friends buy, some of my drawings. I felt
extremely discouraged at this time, and started destroying all that
was in the studio. On a sudden impulse I took a passage to New
York, going steerage. This was in no way disagreeable; in fact,
very interesting. The food was bad, but I found that many pas
sengers, knowing this, had provided themselves with a store of
sausages and other edibles, very good food, which they asked me
to share with them. Middle Europeans and refugees from Russia
and Poland, where they were persecuted as Jews, made up the
third class. The steerage passengers were quartered all together,
and we slept in tiers of bunks. Near where I slept, four Chinamen
played a game of chance with chips, throughout the voyage. I
never saw them on deck; and at night, were I to wake, they were
still there with their chips and monotonous chanting*
Arrived in New York, I did not stay long. A friend whom I
had met in London wrote to me, and in a fortnight I had made
up my mind to return to London and work there. This time I took
a studio in Fulham. I worked hard and seriously for two years,
making studies. In these tumbledown studios in Fulham— they were
known as "The Railway Accident"—! was first made aware of
the ludicrous snobbishness that artists are supposed to be free of,
The other occupants of the studios were artists who were begin
ning their careers. One was a young Australian sculptor* who* I
was given to undertsand, "bid fair to be Australia's premier sculp
tor," He was at the time doing a portrait of the Australian Prime
Minister's daughter; and this romantic affair, through the smarter
setting it obviously clamored for, might possibly have had un
pleasant consequences for me* One day 1 heard that the landlady,
who lived on the premises, had been requested by the artists to
have me removed from the studios as my clothes were somewhat
too Bohemian for the place—not, in fact, respectable enough. The
promising Australian sculptor and a now well-known caricaturist
were the prime movers against me in this, and had it not been
for the women artists in this beehive, who were all in my favor,
PARIS AND LONDON 23
I would have been given notice to quit "The Railway Accident."
At that time I made the acquaintance of Sir Muirhead Bone,
Francis Dodd, Augustus John, and other New English Art Club
members. These were still the days of struggle, and I was far from
satisfied with what I was doing. My aim was to perfect myself
in modeling, drawing, and carving, and it was at this period I vis
ited the British Museum and whenever I had done a new piece of
work, I compared it mentally with what I had seen at the Museum.
These rich collections are rarely visited by sculptors. You could
pass whole days there and never come across a sculptor. It would
be considered a lack of originality to be discovered there. Fancy
a dramatist or poet willingly eschewing Shakespeare and the Eliza
bethans, or a composer of music deliberately avoiding Bach and
Beethoven! Early on, about 1910, I was tremendously interested
in the Elgin Marbles and Greek sculpture, and later in the Egyp
tian rooms and the vast and wonderful collections from Polynesia
and Africa.
CHAPTER THREE
A Thirty Years' War-
The Strand Statues
( 1908-1937 )
ONE day in the spring of 1907, Mr. Francis Dodd asked me
if I could accept a commission from an architect he knew
to decorate a building. This led to my meeting Mr. Charles
Holden, the architect, and to the decorating of the new British
Medical Association building in the Strand.
I set to work and made models of the eighteen figures which
were accepted by the architect* I moved into a large studio in
Cheyne Walk and began the work. It was a tremendous change
for me to move away from "The Railway Accident11 to a fine
studio, and to receive an advance payment on the commission,
I thought I was wealthy, and the future looked bright, I could
now pay for models and get to work on large figures, With ex
perience I learned how quickly one*s funds could be depleted,
Sculpture I should say is about the most expensive mode of making
a living. I cannot think of my other occupation into which you
must put so much. When you come to reckon up your out-of-
pocket expenses against your remuneration, the balance is invari
ably all on the wrong side. So it was with the Strand Statues,
unfortunately. The decoration was important-large figures on
which I could let myself go. I had been like a hound on leash,
and now I was suddenly set free; and I never reckoned the cost.
24
A THIRTY YEARS' WAR 25
I worked with ardor, feverishly, and within the space of fourteen
months the eighteen overlife-sized figures were finished. At first
I was somewhat held back by the admonitions of the architects,
who, although they had given me a big commission, yet felt that
I might do something rash. I already had a reputation for wild-
ness, why I don't know! It is quite possible my appearance at this
time was that of the traditional anarchist. However, later gather
ing strength, as the architects gathered faith, I managed to impose
my own ideas upon the decoration, and had only one bad halt,
when they totally rejected one of the figures and would not have
it included. I considered it one of the best.
However, I went on not anticipating any other kind of trouble.
All was quiet until after the scaffolding was removed from the
first four figures. Then a storm of vituperation burst out suddenly
in the Evening St/mdard and St. James's Gazette, a storm that was
totally unexpected and unprecedented in its fury.
One would have imagined that my work was in some manner
outrageous. It consisted, for the most part, of nudes in such nar
row niches that I was forced to give simple movements to all the
figures. In symbolism I tried to represent man and woman, in their
various stages from birth to old age. A primitive, but in no way
a bizarre, program.
Perhaps this was the first time in London that a decoration
was not purely "decorative"; the figures had some fundamentally
human meaning, instead of being merely adjuncts to an archi
tect's moldings and cornices.
When the commission was first given me, a member of the
British Medical Association suggested that the decoration should
consist of their historically famous medical men. But I was de
termined to do a series of nude figures, and surgeons with side
whiskers, no matter how eminent, could hardly have served my
purpose as models.
The whole effect of the facade was extremely rich and hand
some, and remains so to this day, despite the mutilations the figures
underwent later.
26 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
At the time of the dispute, the scaff olding at one side still being
up, as the decorations were not quite finished, some "experts"
(including a policeman sent by Scotland Yard, who took notes in
his little book), wanted to view them closer. In one of the notes
in the policeman's book I happened to catch sight of "rude.**
That was the word he applied to one of the figures— a Cockneyism
meaning obscene. However, the Bishop of Stepney, Dr. Cosmo
Gordon Lang, who is now the Archbishop of Canterbury, asked
me to show him the sculpture. He mounted the ladders to the
scaffolding and made a close inspection of the figures. He declared
that he saw nothing indecent or shocking about them.
There came sculptors, artists, and directors of galleries. From
below, as the open busses passed by, the passengers would stand
up in a mass and try to view the now-famous Strand Statues. A
meeting was called of the Council of the British Medical Associa
tion to consider what to do- I was a witness, and this tribunal,
resembling an ancient ecclesiastical court to consider a heresy case,
was most impressive. The art of the cartoonist was brought into
play, and music halls and comedians incorporated the Strand Stat
ues in their songs. London had become sculpture-conscious.
There were letters to the Times, petitions and counter-petitions,
and questions in Parliament were asked. Bishops gave their views;
newspaper boys, dustmen, businessmen, policemen, all tired their
opinion on the subject.
The Evening Stmdard and St. Jameses Gazette started hostilities
on the nineteenth of June, 1908, with an article on its front page,
entitled "Bold Sculpture," and went on to say:
We draw attention with some reluctance to five amazing statuary
figures which are meant to adorn the fine mew building of the British
Medical Association in course of erection at the corner of the Strand
and Agar Street From die point of view of the sculptor, they will
doubtless be regarded as work of an excellent kind, but outside the
stodio, and one or two galleries, they represent a development of ait
to which the British public, at any rate, arc not accustomed. With
regard to their appearance, it is unnecessary to say any more than
i/;^?fv ' , ' ''•" rv'4
—«K'« f H, ,, 'V/^f
WOMAN AND CHILD (THE STRAND STATUKs)
A THIRTY YEARS' WAR 27
that they are a form of statuary which no careful father would wish
his daughter, or no discriminating young man, his fiancee, to see.
Nude statuary figures in an art gallery are seen for the most part, by
those who know how to appreciate the art they represent, and it is in
only the most exceptional cases that they afford subjects for the
vulgar comment of the inartistic, who visit art galleries out of pur
poseless curiosity, or with the object of whiling away an idle hour-
people for whom art galleries are never intended. To have art of the
kind indicated, laid bare to the gaze of all classes, young and old, in
perhaps the busiest thoroughfare of the Metropolis of the world, and
portrayed in the form it is on the new building of the British Medical
Association, is another matter. The degree of nudity which has been
chosen for the figures to which we particularly refer, is not calculated
to enhance the artistic effect of the Statuary: Art would not have
suffered by more discriminating treatment. For a certain type of mind,
on the other hand, it cannot but have a demoralizing tendency, and it
is surely unnecessary, having regard to the condition of some of our
West End streets, to give further opportunities for vulgarity *
My statues were defended in the Times by C. J. Holmes, Slade
Professor of Fine Arts at Oxford, Charles Ricketts, Charles Shan
non, Laurence Binyon, and Martin Conway;t and the Times itself
had the following leader on June 24, 1908:
THE STRAND STATUES
The decision of the Council of the British Medical Association with
regard to the statues upon their new building in the Strand, will com
mend itself to all who have considered the matter without prejudice
and in the light of common sense*
The Council, as will be seen from the report of their meeting, which
we publish today, have resolved, with practical unanimity, to instruct
their architect to proceed with the work.
* See Appendix I, "The Strand Statues Controversy," for further articles and
letters,
t See Appendix I, "The Strand Statues Controversy."
28 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
It remains to be seen whether this decision will bring to an end
a controversy which ought never to have been begun. That it ought
to do so is sufficiently evident from the expressions of opinion which
have come from those best qualified to speak on a question of this
kind. Some of these expressions have appeared in our own columns,
while others have been received by the Association, whose sculptor's
work has been attacked with so much vigour and so little discrimina
tion.
An attempt to obtain the interference of the London County Coun
cil, in a sense hostile to the statues, has also met with a discouraging
reception, so that on the whole, it may be hoped that an effectual
check has been given to a purely fictitious agitation.
I felt like a criminal in the dock, and this unexpected hubbub
in 1908 ushered me into a publicity I have always detested. To
accuse me of making sensations is the easiest way of attacking me,
and in reality leaves the question of sculpture untouched. For,
whatever an artist does or fails to do, whatever his reputation, the
work is always there for all to see.
The attacks on the Strand Statues brought me many friends,
some of whom later, when they found that I was really independ
ent in my judgments, fell off.
I had to discover for myself how superficial is the world of art,
and what a wretched lot of logrollers, schemers, sharks, oppor
tunists, profiteers, snobs, parasites, sycophants, camp followers,
social climbers, and what my dear old American, artist friend
"Brandy Bill" called afourflushers,n Infest the world of art-this
jungle into which the artist is forced periodically to bring his work
and Eve.
There was a temporary cessation of hostilities, but no peace*
In 1935 the Southern Rhodesian Government took over the
British Medical Association building, and the High Commissioner
at once announced that the statues should be removed, as the new
occupants thought them undesirable. The tone of this announce*
ment in the press was of so insulting a nature, I was moved to write
A THIRTY YEARS' WAR 29
in protest, and I explained my position in a letter to the Sunday
Observer of May 5, 1935:
SIR,
In your issue of April z8th, your "Observator," in alluding to my
statues at the corner of the Strand and Agar Street refers to them as
"topical" and thereby, laying themselves open to a charge of unsuit-
ability to the new and present owners of the building, the Government
of Southern Rhodesia. Might I point out that they were never intended
to be "topical" and perhaps that is the most far-fetched charge that
could be brought against them. The figures were intended to have
a universal appeal, even perhaps understood in South Rhodesia. The
High Commissioner for South Rhodesia has taken no trouble, so far
as I know, to consult Mr. Charles Holden, the eminent architect, or
myself. The statues are an integral part of the building, and are ac
tually built into the fabric (actually carved in situ), and to remove
them would be risking damage to the statues.
The vandalism consists in removing and putting a price upon a
decoration, the battle for which was fought out twenty-seven years
ago, but the spirit of Philistinism dies not, and united to ownership
dictates what shall and shall not be done to a decoration on a London
building. We think dynasties that destroyed and mutilated the works
of previous generations vandals, and do not hesitate to call them
vandals* How is this different in spirit and intention? Ownership does
not give the right to remove and destroy, or even the right to sell
Yours, etc.,
JACOB EPSTEIN
An acrimonious discussion broke out, and the High Commission
aggressively declared that, as they had paid for the building, they
could do as they pleased with the statues. This gentleman expressed
surprise that I should object to this, as I had been paid for my work
and the statues no longer belonged to me. I had pointed out the
vandalism of removing from a building a decoration which was a
part of its fabric, and which would mean the ruin of the statues.
I was requested by the Manchester Guardian to report upon them,
and with Mr. James Bone I paid a visit to the site. We got as near
3o LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
the statues as we could from opposite buildings, examined them
through glasses, and photographs of all of them were taken. Mr.
Bone reported upon the statues, giving my views.3*
In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, I said:
This is the latest attempt to dictate London taste in sculpture. This
time from Rhodesia. They proposed the removal of the British Medi
cal Association sculptures which twenty-five years ago won against
the Philistines. Today we have a victory of the Philistines from the
outposts of Empire.
For the Southern Rhodesian Government, Mr. A, T. Scott, of
the firm of Sir Herbert Baker, R.A., architects to Southern Rho
desia House, said:—
The position has been misunderstood. What we feel is that the
figures which were all very well, and indeed very appropriate round
the British Medical Association building, are quite out of place as
decoration to a Government Office. Anatomy for the British Medical
Association, yes. But do these figures indicate the produce of Southern
Rhodesia? No. It is a question of what is appropriate,
Sir Eric Maclagan, director of the Victoria and Albert Mu
seum, and an influential committee circulated a petition for the
preservation of the statues- The signature of the President of the
Royal Academy, Sir William Llewellyn, was sought. Sir William
refused to sign»t
I myself, in commenting on the president's refusal to sign the
memorial in support of the statues, recalled that a former president
of the Royal Academy signed a memorial for the removal of my
Hudson Panel in Hyde Park. One president signs a memorial
against one of my statues, and another refuses to sign for. This is
the spirit of the Royal Academy!
* Seie Appendk I, "The Strand Statues Controversy."
A THIRTY YEARS' WAR 31
Further letters were written to the Times y the Telegraph, and
to the Manchester Guardian* Under the combined pressure of in
telligent opinion the day was won, and the statues were left in
peace for two years.
In 1937, immediately after the coronation of George VI, re
moval of some of the decorations which had been attached to the
statues caused a small portion of the work to fall. A head was re
ported to have fallen, and it was alleged that a woman was hit, or
narrowly missed. A vague statement! With this as a proof of the
danger of the statues to the public, scaffolding was erected, and
a process of demolishing the greater part of every statue took
place. My demand that I be allowed to examine and make a report
on the state of the statues was refused. What is left of the statues
now, is a portion of the torso here and a foreleg there, and an arm
somewhere else. Not a single head remains. The mutilation was
complete.
For the dissolution of the stone after only twenty-nine years,
two explanations can be given, one of which seems to me to be of
major importance, although not accepted by the architect of the
building. But what I alleged was never investigated. When I was
working on the statues, I noticed that when rain fell the water
that dripped directly onto the statues caused greenish and blackish
streaks such as I had never seen on stone before. This I believe
was brought about by a metal plate which in each case protected
a jutting cornice, immediately above each of the eighteen statues.
I was told that the plates were of lead, but this I doubt because
of the nature of the discoloration, which began at the time of the
carving of the statues in their site. My opinion is that this liquid,
with some chemical property in it, deteriorated the stone; and
this process had continued for twenty-nine years, causing serious
damage to the statues. One other reason can be given for the rapid
destruction of the surface of the stonework, and that is that the
single blocks out of which the statues were carved were set up in
* See Appendix I, "The Strand Statues Controversy."
32 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
the wrong position from the point of view of weathering; that is,
contrary to their bed positions.
The builders already had the blocks fixed in the building when
I arrived there for the carving. Whatever the cause, some parts of
the statues had rotted; but that the wholesale removal of nine-
tenths of each statue was necessary— of that I am not at all con
vinced.
Many letters were written to show that others shared my doubts
about the executions.*
Before the mutilation of the statues, Sir Muirhead Bone, wishing
to preserve something of them, proposed making casts, I sent my
molder, an expert, to see what could be done. He was received
with discourtesy by the Southern Rhodesian officials, and told that
he would not be given facilities, not even in the matter of water,
to get on with the work. On that account Sir Muirhead had to go
ahead with other molders who hustled through a wretched job, and
made molds which were complete travesties of the originals. The
battle was lost. I had made my protest on esthetic and spiritual
grounds. Naturally, in a court of law I had no case, and so my earli
est large work ended tragically.
Anyone passing along the Strand can now see, as on some an
tique building, the few mutilated fragments of my decoration.
* See Appendix I, *The Strand Statues Controversy,** for letters and trades.
CHAPTER FOUR
Contacts and Encounters
( 1908-1912 )
IT was at this time immediately after my decoration of the Strand
building, that I again took in hand rny development as a
sculptor*
After so much that was large and elemental, I had the desire to
train myself in a more intensive method of working. With that in
view, I began a series of studies from the model, which were as
exact as I could make them, I worked with great care, and followed
the forms of the model by quarter-inches, I should say, not letting
up on any detail of construction of plane, but always keeping the
final composition in view. These studies included the various works
I made from Nan, one of which is in the Tate Gallery, and also
studies from Euphemia Lamb, and a model called Gertrude. I look
upon this period as still formative. Also at that time I did a bust
of Lady Gregory, one of Mrs, Ambrose McEvoy, and several busts
of my wife.
The Lady Gregory was a commission from Sir Hugh Lane, and
he intended it for the Dublin Art Gallery* Sir Hugh was that type
of art patron who does his utmost to lower the artist in his own
estimation by criticizing his work, at the same time gloating over
his gleanings, for which he pays as little as he can. Finally he gets
a title for the donation of his collection. It was my first experience
with this Wad of patron*
The bust of Lady Gregory progressed to my own satis! action*
31
34 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
and it was about completed when one morning Lady Gregory
turned up with the most astonishing head of curls: she had been
to the hairdresser and wished me to alter the head. I was not in
clined to do this, as the bust had up to then been planned to give
Lady Gregory that air of the intellectual, somewhat "school-
mannish" person she was, and her usual appearance was all of a
piece and quite dignified. Also, she announced that if I came to the
theater that evening I would see her in evening clothes and would
then see how much finer she appeared with bare shoulders. It is
amazing how Englishwomen of no uncertain age fancy themselves
dressed as Venus. On both points 1 told Lady Gregory that I could
not imagine the bust any better if I altered it as she wished, and in
my headstrong way kept to my guns. This practically terminated
the sittings.
When Sir Hugh Lane saw my bust of Lady Gregory for the
first time, he threw up his hands in horror and exclaimed, "Poor
Aunt Augusta. She looks as if she could eat her own children.'9
Later I was to get accustomed to this sort of reception of a work,
but at the time it nonplussed me for I had put into it many days
of work with long sittings, and much labor* Nevertheless, Sir
Hugh Lane hurried the bust over to Dublin in time for horse show
week.
I began at this time to do commissioned portraits of people* The
artist who imagines that he puts his best into a portrait in order to
produce something good, which will be a pleasure to the sitter and
to himself, will have some bitter experiences.
I was also to meet for the first time in my life the hostility of a
leader of a clique of artists who arrogated to themselves the sole
possession of superior taste in matters of art.
At one time a group of artists was got together under Roger
Fry's management, and they were assured of a yearly subsidy and
patronage. This very good arrangement lasted for some years* of
course to the benefit of that particular clique, When this group be
came somewhat stale, Matthew Smith and I were to join it;
CONTACTS AND ENCOUNTERS 35
but we discovered that the subsidy had just been withdrawn and
would not be available for us. We both declined the honor.
These gentry never hesitate to go out of their way to damage
and undermine an artist, even if he is only a beginner. They use
the press, especially the weeklies; and their social activities natu
rally help them to influence people. They are adepts at organiza
tion and never lose opportunities. People are not generally aware
that these amateurs and busybodies are often dealers, using their
homes to show off and to sell works on commission.
It was at this period that I was proposed for membership in the
Royal Society of British Sculptors, by Havard Thomas. I was re
jected. The Royal Society represents officially British sculpture,
and later on their attitude toward me was further emphasized.
When, at an annual dinner of the society, their guest of honor, Sir
Herbert Samuel (now Lord Samuel), gave his opinion on my
work, he said:
aWe are living in an age to some extent of intellectual con
fusion, when there are no great standards in many things and when
eccentricity has full scope. While, to many of us, the portrait busts
of Epstein have upon them the authentic mark of genius, some of
his monumental works, such as 'Genesis,' the one now on exhibi
tion, 'Behold the Man' and the Hudson Memorial, seem to be an
aberration of genius.
"For my own part, while sculpture of the early inhabitants of
Easter Island and Benin may be quite interesting from the point of
view of anthropology, I am not sure they ought to be models for
present-day art. I venture to suggest that the cult of the primitive,
merely because it is primitive and irrespective of real merit, is a
sign not of open-minded enlightenment, but may be a sign of ultra-
sophistication and indeed of decadence."
Later, at the time when the Hudson Memorial was erected, Sir
John Lavery as a gesture proposed me for membership in the
Royal Academy, He asked me if I would allow him to put my
name up and, in a moment of weakness, I consented to his doing
this. I felt uneasy about it, regretting that I had consented; but I
36 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
need have had no fears about the matter, for on asking the secretary
of the Royal Academy to remove niy name from the list of candi
dates, I was told that after seven years' lapse one's name was auto
matically struck off.
In 1911, while I was at work on the Oscar Wilde Tomb in my
Chelsea studio, a young fellow called on me one Sunday morning
and asked if he could see the carving. It was Gaudier-Brzeska, a
picturesque, slight figure with lively eyes and a sprouting beard.
He was very pleasant, I thought, and he gave Ezra Pound an ac
count of this first meeting. He declared to Pound that I asked
him if he carved direct; and, afraid to acknowledge that he hadn't,
he hurried home and immediately started a carving. This was very
characteristic of him.
Gaudier wished to be always in the vanguard of the moment. Not
a bad thing in a very young man, but likely to lead him later into
"anything for up-to-dateness"; he had any amount of talent and
great energy. He awoke very early in the mornings and immedi
ately set to work, finishing something right off in some particular
style; but his volatile nature caused him to change his style from
week to week. I say this, as critics now, not knowing the sources
of all these styles, are inclined to speak of him as am innovator in
sculpture.
His early death in the Great War gave him, in their eyes, an
immediate status which was out of proportion to 1m achieve
ments. This is apt to happen in such circumstances, especially when
the first appraisers are distinguished by their knowledge of litera
ture rather than by their knowledge of art* Far from innovating,
Gaudier always followed. He followed quickly, overnight, as it
were; and in die short period of his working life he tried out any
number of styles, not sticking long to any one. There have been
some picturesque lives written about him and Sophie Brgeska, who
lived with him.
His life lent itself to dramatization, and a play was written about
him in America. Gaudier himself was young enough to wish to
startle people, and I remember his declaring that he was homo-
<J
c<
00
CONTACTS AND ENCOUNTERS 37
sexual, expecting us to be horrified. He wore a cloak over his shoul
ders and tried to grow a beard, and got his eyes blacked or nose
punched in fights with Cockneys. My relations with Gaudier were
very friendly. We were interested in each other's work. In the
French fashion of the younger to the older artist, he wrote to me
and addressed me as Cher Maitre. When it came to poor Sophie,
her later insane period was no surprise to those who knew her
outbursts of frenzied jealousy and hatred of anyone who ap
proached Gaudier.
I visited Gaudier at his workshop in Putney. He occupied one
of a number of large workshops that were constructed under the
railway arches leading to Putney Bridge. Gaudier was at that time
working on his portrait of Ezra Pound in marble. Pound had asked
him to make it phallic, and this Gaudier was endeavoring to do, ex
plaining to me the biological significance of the parts. Every ten
or fifteen minutes the trains roared overhead, but Gaudier said he
had quite got used to this— in fact, liked it. We went over to sup
per at the tenement where he lived near by with Sophie Brzeska.
Gaudier got at the kitchen stove and made a stew, very strong, with
heaps of all kinds of things in it. Sophie sat by and talked. We got
on very well, although Sophie had it always in the back of her
mind that I was standing in Henri's light. She forgot that I was
much older than Gaudier, and got started long before him. She
had complained about Henri's not getting so well paid for his
things as I was. The fact was that in her partisanship for Gaudier
she trod on everyone's toes,
After Gaudier's death, John Quinn of New York asked me to
get into touch with Sophie Brzeska and see if I could purchase
works for Mm. I visited her in her place and saw what she had, and
arranged that she should write to Quinn and tell him what things
she had and at what prices. At the end of the talk she asked me to
have a piece of Gaudier's work, which I refused on account of her
peculiar nature,
The last time I saw Gaudier was at Charing Cross Station when
he left for France the last time* The turmoil was terrible. Troops
38 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
were departing and Sophie was in a state of hysterics and collapse.
Gaudier's friends, including Hulme, Richard Aldington, Tancred,
and Ethel Kibblewhite, were there to see him off. Gaudier him
self, terribly pale and shaken by Sophie's loud sobs, said good-by
to us.
During the period in Paris, in 1912, while I was engaged with
the erection of the Oscar Wilde Tomb, I made the acquaintance
of Picasso, Modigliani, Ortiz de Zarate, Brancusi, and other Mont-
parnasse artists. This was a period of intense activity among the
artists of Montparnasse. Certainly there were more men of talent
who came to the caf6s then than at any subsequent period. Later
a tough element invaded the quarter. Cabarets sprang up, and it
became a haunt of night-club sightseers. Models and negro boxers
became artists overnight, and held exhibitions. None of these new
found geniuses turned out to be Rousseaus or Modiglianis* The
present gathering on the terrace of the D6me are mostly holiday
makers, or at best amateur artists who are attracted by the no
toriety of the quarter, Ortiz de Zarate can still be found there, also
Vassiiieva. Modigliani I knew well. I saw him for a period of six
months daily, and we thought of finding a shed on the Butte de
Montmartre where we would work together in the open air. We
spent a day hunting around for vacant grass plots for huts, but
without result. Our inquiries about empty huts only made the
owners or guardians look askance at us as suspicious persons* How
ever, we did find some very good Italian restaurants where Modig
liani was received with open arms. All Bohemian Paris knew him.
His geniality and esprit were proverbial At times he indulged
himself in what he called "engueuling." This form of violent abuse
of someone who had exasperated him was always, I thought, well
earned by the pretentiousness and imbecility of those he attacked,
and he went for them with gusto. With friends he was charming
and witty in conversation, and without any affectations* His studio
at that time was a miserable hole within a courtyard, and here he
lived and worked. It was then filled with nine or ten of those long
CONTACTS AND ENCOUNTERS 39
heads which were suggested by African masks, and one figure.
They were carved in stone, and at night he would place candles on
the top of each one. The effect was that of a primitive temple. A
legend of the quarter said that Modigliani, when under the in
fluence of hashish, embraced these sculptures. Modigliani never
seemed to want to sleep at night, and I recall one night when we
left him very late, he came running down the passage after us,
calling us to come back, very like a frightened child. He lived
alone at that period, working entirely on sculpture and drawings.
In appearance he was short and handsome, and contrary to general
belief or the impression given by his pictures, robust and even
powerful Later he had any number of the girls of the quarter after
him. At his death his brother arrived in Montparnasse to look after
a child said to be ModiglianFs, but so many girls came claiming
maternity to Modigliani's children that the brother gave it up in
despair.
When I knew him he had not attained fame outside Mont
parnasse, and only rarely sold a work. Drawings which he had
made in the morning he would try to sell at caf6 tables for any
thing he could get for them. We had our meals at Rosalie's, the
Italian woman who had once been a beautiful model; and there
Rosalie would admonish Modigliani. She had a motherly love for
her compatriot and would try and restrain him from his "engueul-
ing" her other clients. She tried to make Modigliani settle down
and be less nervy and jumpy- He was peculiarly restless and never
sat down or stayed in one spot for long.
Rosalie had a large collection of Modigliani's drawings in a cup
board, set against multitudes of free meals, I suspect, because, as
I have said, the old Italian had a very kind heart for him. When
he died, in 1921, she naturally turned to this cupboard for the
drawings, as dealers were after them, but alas for Rosalie's hopes,
the drawings, mixed with sausages and grease, had been eaten by
rats.
A painting which I remember on her walls by Utrillo was later
cut out of the plaster and sold to a dealer* Modigliani would say,
40 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
"A beefsteak is more important than a drawing* I can easily make
drawings, but I cannot make a beefsteak/'
Hashish, he believed, would lend him help in his work and cer
tainly the use of it affected his vision, so that he actually saw his
models as he drew them. Also he was influenced by Les Chants de
Maldoror, which he carried in his pocket and to which he would
refer as uune explosion"
I was amazed once when we were at the Galt6 Montparnasse, a
small popular theater in the Rue de la Gait6, to see near us a girl
who was the image of his peculiar type, with a long oval face and
a very slender neck* A Modigliani alive. It was as if he had con
jured up one of his own images, Modigliani's liveliness, gaiety,
and exuberant spirits endeared him to hosts, and his funeral was
characterized as une funeraille en Prince. Artists, tradesmen, and
caf6 waiters joined in the long procession. "Les Agents™ stood at
the salute as the long cortege passed. Picasso, seeing that, and re
calling that Modigliani and the police had not got on well to
gether during his lifetime, called the funeral "la rev/mche de
Modigliani"
I was in London when Modigliani died. At that time in Shaftes-
bury Avenue, Zobourovsky, Modigliani's dealer, had a gallery* I
was in this gallery in 1921, when a telegram came through from
Paris saying, "Modigliani dying* Sell no more of his works. Hold
them back," These works had been very inexpensive up to his
death. From then on the prices rose to the amazing figures they
have reached now.
In 1912 I went also to the studio of Brancusi, with Ortiz. Bran-
cusi never went to the caf 6s. He was in the habit of keeping a num
ber of bottles of milk "maturing/* and rows of these bottles were
in the passage of his studio. He would exclaim against caf6 life
and say that one lost one's force there* No matter when one called
on Brancusi, he was at work; and yet he always found time to be
genial. He is in his simplicity, truly saintly. Brancusi and Modig
liani were not friendly when I first knew them* but later became
so* I remember Brancusi telling me of how at one period he had
CONTACTS AND ENCOUNTERS 41
rescued Modigliani out of the clutches of a rapacious dealer, who
had practically immured him in a cellar in order to exploit him.
He was without decent clothing and ashamed to go out. Brancusi
had gone and bought a pair of trousers and a jersey so that he
could make a getaway.
Brancusi's sculpture has in many quarters too great an influence,
and he is the origin even of much commercial art, influencing the
mannequins that one sees in the shop windows. Strange that what
seemed then so novel should become banal through its popularity
in Fifth Avenue, and later in Regent Street, shops. Through their
imitation and commercialization, seemingly new and aesthetic
forms became in their turn quite commonplace. Brancusi is not to
be blamed for this, and I think he must look with dismay on this
imitation and spreading of his doctrine. African sculpture, no
doubt, influenced Brancusi; but to me he exclaimed against its in
fluence. One must not imitate Africans, he often said. Another of
his sayings was directed against Michelangelo, for his realism. He
would pluck at the back of his hand and pinch the flesh. "Michel
angelo," he would say; "beefsteak!"
This period in Paris was in itself, from the point of view of
working, arid. For one reason or another I did little work, and in
the end got very exasperated with Paris and determined to go back
to England— if possible get into some solitary place to work. This
was actually an intense reaction to my life in Paris which, more
than at any other period that I can recall, was one of fruitless at
tempts to settle down and carry through some new work. I remem
ber that I had taken a studio and started carving; no sooner had I
got started than my neighbor who lived below complained of my
hammering. He was a baker who slept only during the day. The
landlord explained that it was a painter's studio and not a sculp
tor's. These rows and continual interruptions finally decided me
to leave Paris for good; and, coming to England, I rented a bun
galow on the Sussex coast at a solitary place called Pett Level,
where I could look out to sea and carve away to my heart's con
tent without troubling a soul It was here I carved the "Venus," the
42 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
three groups of doves, the two Flenite carvings and the marble
"Mother and Child," now in the New York Museum of Modern
Art, This was a period of intense activity, and had it not been for
the war and the impossibility of living in the country and making
a living, I would have stayed there forever. With the war came
difficulties, A sculptor living on the coast was beyond the under
standing of the military authorities, and I had several visits from
inspectors who were puzzled as to why I should choose to live
there and occupy myself with something they could not quite
make out. As one official put it suspiciously in questioning me,
"You are an alleged sculptor, are you not?" These petty vexations
and a bombing raid by zeppelins decided me to move away alto
gether, and I shipped my sculpture to London with regret, giving
up a place where I had been very happy and where I had had a
very fruitful period of work,
CHAPTER FIVE
The Tomb of Oscar Wilde
( 1912-1913 )
I HEARD of the commission to do the tomb of Oscar Wilde the
day after it had been announced at a dinner given to Robert
Ross by his friends at the Ritz. I neither knew of this dinner nor
of its being made the occasion for an announcement that I was to
receive a commission to design a tomb for Wilde. In the morning
when friends rang me up to congratulate me I imagined a hoax
was being played upon me. The rumor was confirmed later in the
day, and I believe the secrecy with regard to me can only be ex
plained by the fact that other sculptors knew of the commission
and expected it to be given them, and the trustee for the monu
ment, Mr, Robert Ross, was too timid to let it be known that I
would be offered the work for fear of what these sculptors might
do to hinder the plan. Ross was the literary executor for Wilde,
and the secrecy maintained with regard to me is otherwise in
explicable.
I had only just finished the British Medical Association figures,
and this important commission following immediately after was a
matter of some excitement. It took me some time to get started
on the work. I made sketches and carried them out, but I was
dissatisfied and scrapped quite completed work. Finally I deter
mined on the present design, and I went to Derbyshire to the
Hopton Wood stone quarries, where I saw an immense block
which had just been quarried preparatory to cutting it up into
43
44 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
thin slabs for wall facings. I bought this monolith weighing twenty
tons on the spot, and had it transported to my London studio. I
began the work immediately and without hesitation continued to
labor at it for nine months. I carved a flying demon-angel across the
face, a symbolic work of combined simplicity and ornate decora
tion, and no doubt influenced by antique carving. For me its merit
lay in its being a direct carving and on a grand scale* When it was
finished I threw open my studio and had it shown, and what notice
there was in the press was singularly favorable. I never looked for
ward to the reception the work was to receive at the hands of the
Paris authorities* The Evening Standard, which had attacked my
Strand statues with such virulence, took a different tone, and even
headed its article, "Mr. JL Epstein's Dignified Sculptured *
The work was transported to Paris and erected in its place over
the remains of Oscar Wilde. It is actually a tomb, and not just a
grave monument. On the back of the tomb is carved the in
scription:
And alien tears shall fill for him
Pity's long-broken um
For his mourners will be outcast men,
And outcasts always mourn,
Whtn I arrived at P&re Lachaise cemetery and saw the monu
ment finally in place, I was suddenly confronted with a formidable
apparition ia the shape of a certain countess, who upbraided me
for what she considered a horrible Insult to her dear dead friend
Oscar. At the same time she informed me that she had come to
get a story for die Paris Daily Mml—of course, a story that would
not be to my credit I recall that this countess, an American lady,
very large and very blonde, had been brought to my studio in Lon
don to see the finished carving, and had with difficulty been per
suaded to leave the studio. Her admiration was such that she had
asked me if she cotdd see the monument at midnight, and prefer-
* See Appendk 11, 'The Tomb of Oscar WMe-Atttck and
THE TOMB OF OSCAR WILDE 45
ably by moonlight. I of course refused this, and here she was filled
with indignation. As I remained calm, her hysteria died down, and
when I left she was kneeling at the foot of the carving crossing
herself and murmuring prayers.
I was still at work putting the finishing carving to the head
at the cemetery when, arriving one morning, I found the tomb cov
ered with an enormous tarpaulin, and a gendarme standing beside
it. He informed me that the tomb was banned. I would not be
allowed to work on it. I waited, and when the gendarme moved
off I removed the tarpaulin and started working. The gendarme,
returning from his stroll, gravely shook his head and replaced the
tarpaulin, expressing his disapproval of my conduct. Thereafter
the gendarme stayed with the work. I returned a few days later
with a company of French artists to show it to them, and I had
again to remove the tarpaulin with the usual protests from the
gendarme, who came hurrying up.
Artists and writers who heard of the ban on the tomb took the
matter up, and manifestoes and protests in the Paris press followed.
I was given to understand by Robert Ross that the work was con
sidered indecent, and he asked me if I would modify it. There was
no indecency in the monument, and I refused to do anything that
would admit I had done an indecent work. Thereupon Mr. Ross
set about finding someone who would do as he wished. In the
meantime, the French artists and writers had produced a very re
markable protest against the action of the Prefecture of the Seine.
Articles and letters by famous writers, Remy de Gourmont and
Laurent Tailhade, appeared.
I think die story of this French protest-a protest by famous men
of letters and artists—so important that reproduction of these articles
becomes a matter of historic documentation, and I will give them
more or less in the order of their appearance.*
While this tremendous protest was being made, the great Rodin
himself failed the supporters of the monument for reasons peculiar
* See Appendk II, "The Tomb of Oscar Wilde-Attack and Defense."
46 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
to himself. A beautiful Russian-English girl who knew Rodin
volunteered to go as an emissary to solicit his support with photo
graphs of the tomb. Without looking at the photographs Rodin
started to upbraid her for bringing to his notice the work of a
young sculptor who he imagined was her lover, and he declared
he would do nothing to help her. A plain girl would have been a
better emissary to Rodin.
It remains only to add that a petition, organized by Lytton
Strachey to have the money refunded which I had had to expend
on duties to take the monument into France failed of its object,
The petition was as follows:
July j
The sculptor Epstein has just completed the Tomb of Oscar Wilde
which is going to be placed In the cemetery of P&re Lachaise. It is
estimated that the customs duty will amount to 120 pounds at the
least, in consequence of the value of the stones which the artist used,
The monument is a serious and interesting work of trt, destined for
a public position in Paris,
It is dedicated to the memory of the famous English poet and
author, Oscar Wilde. Given these circumstances, it is suggested to us
that we should make some approach to those concerned in the French
Government in order to obtain an exemption from customs duty.
The aesthetic merit of this work by Mr. Epstein and the public
interest it has awakened, lead us to hope that the artist could be freed
from this onerous charge. We think that the favor of such an exemp
tion would be in full conformity with the fine tradition of the French
nation, which is so justly renowned for its attitude of enlightened
munificence towards the arts.
SIGNED: GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, H. G. WELLS, SIR JOHN LAVKRY,
ROBERT Ross, and LEON BAKST
The monument was altered* Robert Ross had a large plaque
modeled and cast in bronze, and fitted to the figure* as a fig leaf
is applied. A band of artiste and poets subsequently made a raid
upon the monument and removed this plaque; and one evening
in the Caf6 Royal, a man appeared wearing this affair suspended
THE TOMB OF OSCAR WILDE 47
from his neck and, approaching me, explained its significance. The
monument remained covered by the tarpaulin until the outbreak
of the war, when it was removed without remark.
Postscript: I have only to add to the foregoing account of the
Oscar Wilde Tomb that my relations with Robert Ross were on
the whole very cordial. On one or two occasions there were slight
disagreements over the length of time I took to do the monument,
and this affected the payments on account. These disputes were
settled in my favor; but, as rumors magnifying every incident con
nected with Wilde or the Tomb were rife, I was told that Ross
had deposited a memorandum at the British Museum concerning
the working out of the Tomb, which gives his version of any dis
putes which arose. I can regard any memorandum with equa
nimity, if one really exists; and my account, I hope, will stand
against any perversion of the facts.
Robert Ross saw the Tomb while it was in the course of carving,
and when it was finished visited my studio several times. Never
once did he find anything wrong with it, and he wrote to the Pall
Mall Gazette a letter defending the work, which I give here.
Sm,
I will be much obliged if you will kindly correct the statement of
Le Journal reproduced in the Observer and die London evening papers
of Saturday.
M. Lepine cannot have ordered any postponement of the unveiling
of Mr. Epstein's beautiful monument to Wilde for the very good
reason that no date had been fixed for the ceremony. Even the police
cannot postpone an unfixed date. The monument would in ordinary
course have remained veiled at my own instructions until the cere
mony* It is true that the police have taken official possession of this
unique work of art of which I am sure they will take the greatest care.
I regard the arrest of the monument by the French authorities
simply as a graceful outcome of the Entente Cordiale and a symptom
on the part of our allies to prove themselves worthy of political union
with our great nation, which, rightly or wrongly, they think has
48 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
always put Propriety before everything. I hesitate to say that the rest
lies in the lap of the gods, because that is precisely the part of the
statue to which exception is taken.
London, Sept. 28 Yours, etc.
ROBERT Ross
CHAPTER SIX
Abstractionists and Futurists.
A Philosopher Friend
(1913-1917)
IT was In the experimental pre-war days of 1913 that I was fired
to do the Rock Drill, and my ardor for machinery (shortlived)
expended itself upon the purchase of an actual drill, second hand,
and upon this I made and mounted a machinelike robot, visored,
menacing, and carrying within itself its progeny, protectively en
sconced. Here is the armed, sinister figure of today and tomorrow.
No humanity, only the terrible Frankenstein we have made our
selves into. I exhibited this work complete in plaster at the London
Group, and I remember Gaudier-Brzeska was very enthusiastic
about it when, in 1913, he visited my studio with Ezra Pound to
view it- Pound started expatiating on the work. Gaudier turned on
him and snapped, "Shut up. You understand nothing."
Later I lost my interest in machinery and discarded the drill. 1
cast in metal only the upper part of the figure.
In reviewing this period and its concern with abstract forms, I
cannot see that sculptors who took up abstraction later and used it
made any advance on the 1913-14 period, or produced more novel
forms, although with surrealism came in the use of mannequins
from shop windows and castings from life; also the incorporation
of loaves of bread, lunatic collections of nails, and bird cages.
Actual movement is not novel either, for I had thought of attach-
49
50 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
ing pneumatic power to my rock drill and setting it in motion,
thus completing every potentiality of form and movement in one
single work. All this, I realized, was really child's play, like those
toy circuses that children get going and which fill them with such
excitement. This kind of excitement is far removed from the nature
of the aesthetic experience and satisfaction that sculpture should
give. In our attempts to extend the range of sculpture we are led
into extravagance and puerility. What Is sad is to see the younger
generation adopting these outworn originalities, thinking they are
doing so where we left off ; and with the conceit of youth, imagin
ing themselves innovators who have inherited, and are surpassing,
the achievements of their elders. When I returned to a normal
manner of working, and was so bold as again to carve and model a
face with its features, the advanced critics spoke of my having
"thrown up the sponge/' I was lost to the movement I feel easy
about this. The discipline of simplification of forms, unity of de
sign, and co-ordination of masses is all to the good; and I think
this discipline has influenced me in my later works like the "Behold
the Man" and the "Adam," But to think of abstraction, as an end in
itself is undoubtedly letting oneself be led Into a cul-de-sac, and
can only lead to exhaustion and impotence. Here Is how Ezra
Pound viewed it:
EZRA POUND'S ESTIMATE FROM THE EGOIST
MARCH 1 6, 1914
The exhibition of new art now showing at the Goupil Gallery
deserves the attention of everyone Interested in either painting or
sculpture. The latter art is represented by the work of Epstein and of
Gaudier-Brzeska. I endeavored to praise these men about a month
ago, and shall again so endeavor,
Jacob Epstein has sent In three pieces; a "Group of Birds" placid
with an eternal placidity, existing in the permanent places. They have
that greatest quality of art, to wit: certitude.
"A Bird Pluming Itself" is like a cloud bent back upon itsdf~aot a
woolly cloud, but one of those clouds that are blown smooth by the
wind. It is gracious and aerial
DOLORES
ABSTRACTIONISTS AND FUTURISTS 51
These things are great art because they are sufficient in themselves.
They exist apart, unperturbed by the pettiness and the daily irritation
of a world full of Claud Phillipses and Saintsburys, and of the con
stant bickerings of uncomprehending minds. They infuriate the deni
zens of this superficial world because they ignore it. Its impotences
and its importances do not affect them. Representing as they do, the
immutable, the calm thoroughness of unchanging relations, they are as
the gods of the Epicureans, apart, unconcerned, unrelenting.
This is no precious or affected self-binding aloofness. Mr. Epstein
has taken count of all the facts. He is in the best sense, realist.
The green flenite woman expresses all the tragedy and enigma of
the germinal universe: she also is permanent, unescaping.
This work infuriates the superficial mind, it takes no count of this
morning's leader; of transient conditions. It has the solemnity of Egypt.
It is no use saying that Epstein is Egyptian and that Brzeska is
Chinese, Nor would I say that the younger man is a follower of the
elder. They approach life in different manners.
Brzeska is in a formative stage, he is abundant and pleasing. His
animals have what one can only call a "snuggly," comfortable feeling,
that might appeal to a child. A very young child would like them
to play with, if they were not stone and too heavy.
Of the two animal groups, his stags are the more interesting if con
sidered as a composition of forms, "The Boy with a Coney" is "Chou,"
or suggests slightly the bronze animals of that period. Brzeska is as
much concerned with representing certain phases of animal life as is
Epstein with presenting some austere permanence; some relation of life
and yet outside it. It is as if some realm of "Ideas," of Platonic patterns,
were dominated by Hathor. There is in his work an austerity, a meta
physics, like that of Egypt— one doesn't know quite how to say it.
All praise of works of art is very possibly futile—were it not that one
finds among many scoffers a few people of good will who are eager
for this new art and not quite ready,
It is perhaps unfitting for a layman to attempt technicalities, the
planes of Mr. Epstein's work seem to sink away from their outline
with a curious determination and swiftness.
Last evening I watched a friend's parrot outlined against a hard
grey-silver twilight. That is a stupid way of saying that I had found a
52 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
new detail or a new correlation with Mr, Epstein's stone birds. I saw
anew that something masterful had been done. I got a closer idea of
a particular kind of decision.
The London Group gathered together before the war the best
of the English artists. Looking back at it, I contrast it with present-
day groups who must stick together like thieves for self -protection,
in a "united we stand" attitude, rather than for any respect they
have for each other, or enthusiasm for the common weal of art.
There was an integrity about the painters and sculptors in the Lon
don Group which is lacking today. In fact, it was the incursion
into the Group of the abstractionists that caused the Saturday
afternoon gatherings to break up.
It was at this period that Mr. Marinetti turned up with his futur
ists. They were pre-Fascists, and with true fascist impertinence
they went from city to city spreading themselves and their silly
gospel, and showing their incompetent paintings and sculpture. In
England we are very ready to receive what seems novel and ex
citing, on condition that it is superficial enough and entertaining
enough. So these Italian charlatans were received with open arms.
At an exhibition of futuristic art, I remember Marinetti turned up
with a few twigs he had found in Hyde Park, and a toothbrush
and a matchbox tied together with string. He called this "The New
Sculpture/' and hung it from the chandelier. This was the begin
ning of those monkey tricks we see elaborated today in Paris, in
London, and in New York. When reciting his own poems, Mari
netti used an amount of energy that was astonishing, pouring with
perspiration, and the veins swelling, almost to bursting point on
his forehead— altogether an unpleasant sight. Before beginning his
own poems he would recite a poem of Baudelaire and demolish it,
as he thought. He would then proceed to imitate the chatter of
machine guns, the booming of cannons, and the whir of airplane
engines. On this occasion, one of our "rebels" beat a big dram for
him at appropriate moments. Apart from these unusual antics,
MarinettTs "poems" were of an appalling commoapkceness and
ABSTRACTIONISTS AND FUTURISTS 53
banality. He was a stupid-looking man, and his impudence was as
great as his energy. Of course, he was the model for our own Eng
lish futurists, abstractionists, and careerists. Personally, I had no
sympathy with this nonsense and show. It became very tiresome,
as all spoofy and artificial entertainment does; and the novelty soon
wore off. Marinetti went back to give birth to Mussolini, and our
own rebels have since made frantic efforts to enter the Royal
Academy.
At this period (1912) I got to know T. E. Hulme very well.
His evenings, always on Tuesdays, at a house in Frith Street were
gatherings that attracted many of the intellectuals and artists.
Hulme was a large man in bulk, and also large and somewhat
abrupt in manner. He had the reputation of being a bully and ar
rogant because of this abruptness. He was really of a candid and
original nature like that of Samuel Johnson, and only his intoler
ance of sham made him feared.
Personally, I think he was of a generous and singularly likable
character, and with artists he was humble and always willing to learn.
In his own subjects of philosophy and religion he was a profound
student, and he made short shrift of the pretentious when it came
to discussing philosophy. Of this side of him I understood little,
although I often listened to his argumentative exegesis.
He had translated Bergson (An Introduction to Metaphysics)
into English, and had written on him as early as 1909, as well as
on Sorel and Croce; and the many violent discussions in Frith
Street interested and amused me. Mrs. Kibblewhite and her sister
Dora were the hostesses at the parties, and their old father, who
was a designer in stained-glass windows, sometimes looked in.
The company, mostly workers in intellectual fields, included
Ford Madox Hueffer, as he was then called (I remember him as
a very pontifical person), and Ashley Dukes, A. R. Orage, editor
of the New Age; Douglas Ainslie, Richard Curie, Sir Edward
Marsh, Wyndham Lewis, Ezra Pound, Richard Aldington, Ramiro
de Maeztu, who later became Spanish Ambassador to the Argen-
54 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
tine, and many others. Among artists Charles Ginner, Harold Gil-
man, Gaudier-Brzeska, and Spencer Gore, Madame Karlowska and
Robert Bevan. I remember having an amusing argument on one
occasion with Stanley Spencer concerning a statue of Buddha on
the mantelpiece. When Spencer was asked what he thought of it,
he shuddered and said he new nothing of Asiatic art, as he was a
Christian. I asked him what part of the world Christ came from!
Spencer was of that school of philosophers who will not drink
coffee because it is not grown in England. Hulme, to attract so
large and varied a company of men, must have had a quality, I
should say, of great urbanity; and his broad-mindedness, I main
tain, ceased only when he met humbug and pretentiousness.
Someone once asked him how long he would tolerate Ezra
Pound, and Hulme thought for a moment, then said that he knew
already exactly when he would have to kick him downstairs.
From Gaudier-Brzeska he commissioned some small works which
Gaudier thought it great fun to do. These were small brass carvings
in a somewhat abstract style, and Hulme would carry them about
in his pocket and handle them while talking* Hulme excluded
women for the most part from his evenings, as he said the sex
element interfered with intellectual talk— a confession of his own
weakness* Although certain women frankly detested him, he was
a virile type of man, and he once humorously confessed that his
extensive knowledge of the geography of outlying parts of London
came entirely from his suburban love affairs,
I remember his astonishment whea a book of D. H* Lawrence's
appeared which was entirely concerned with sex. To his mind this
wa$ inexplicable. He attributed this book, not without reason, to a
lack of virility on the part of the author, Hulme, although he never
lived to fulfill the great promise his remarkable mind and character
foreshadowed, yet has aroused tremendous interest by what are
really only fragments of his projected works* He was a great con
versationalist, and he admitted to being lazy. He always said he
had plenty of time to do his work in— he was in no hurry* He also
projected a large family, and felt he had plenty of time for that
ABSTRACTIONISTS AND FUTURISTS 55
too. He was killed by a German shell while serving in the Royal
Marine Artillery at Nienport in Flanders on September 27, 1917.
A book he had written on my sculpture, and which he had with
him in manuscript, disappeared from his effects, and has never
turned up. Later, about a year after Hulme's death I met by acci
dent in a train a naval man who had belonged to Hulme's unit. I
questioned him, and he remembered Hulme very well. He recalled
that, during one of the recurring bombardments, a shell came over,
which Hulme, apparently absorbed in some thoughts of his own,
failed to hear. He kept standing up, paying no attention, when all
the others in his company had thrown themselves down flat.
The news of Hulme's death, when it reached London, caused
widespread pain and sorrow; he had been so much and so strongly
alive. For a long time it was difficult to believe that he was phys
ically dead. We all felt a personal loss.
I should like to quote here the foreword which I wrote for his
book, Speculations, which "was published posthumously in London
and New York in 1924:
Hulme was my very great friend, and what I can say about him is
entirely personal.
What appealed to me particularly in him was the vigor and sincerity
of his thought. He was capable of kicking a theory as well as a man
downstairs when the occasion demanded. I always felt him to be my
chief bulwark against malicious criticism. He was a man who had no
regard for personal fame or notoriety, and he considered that his
work lay entirely in the future. His whole life was a preparation for
the task of interpretation which he had set himself. He would make
reckless sacrifices to possess works of art which he could not really
afford; he bought not only my own works, but also those of Gaudier-
Brzeska— and this long before Gaudier was well known.
Hulrne was a terror to "fumistes" and charlatans of all kinds. His
passion for the truth was uncontrolled.
I recall dozens of little personal things characteristic of the man-
but particularly our first meeting. I was at work on the Wilde monu
ment* Hulme immediately put his own construction on my work—
56 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
turned it into some theory of projectiles. My sculpture only served
to start the train of his thought. Abstract art had an extraordinary
attraction for him: his own brain worked in that way.
At one time, in company with a group of "imagists," he composed
some short poems with which, had he gone on, he would have made
what would be called a literary "success." But this seemed to him too
facile. Like Plato and Socrates, he drew the intellectual youth of his
time around him. We have no one quite like him in England today.
I had modeled a head of Hulme which was in the possession of
Mrs. Kibblewhite; and it is now, I believe, owned by Ashley
Dukes,
Orage was a man of extraordinary mental vigor. He had a mag
netic personality, attracting people by his conversation* His charm
of voice and manner drew listeners to him, and he went about like
a Greek philosopher or rhetor, with a following of disciples.
Hulme also had this following. As between the two, Hulme was
the more solid man— the more profound mind, Orage was undoubt
edly greatly under his influence at one time. After Hulme's death
Orage came under the influence of the Russian Gurdjieff, who
had a house near Versailles, where he gathered men and women
together to lead a new life and learn a new philosophy. Many
mysterious stories were told of this place. In any case Orage later
went to America as a fisher of men, as it were, and also women—
in all cases wealthy men and women— for this establishment.
I recall that I had not been long in New York in 1917 on my
visit there, when I ran into Orage, and he took me along to a cock
tail party where I met Carl Van Vechten and Paul Robeson.
Orage was there lecturing, and gathering the pupils for the Ver
sailles Abbaye Th61ine. One poor old lady I met at Grage's flat
complained that she had wished to join the sacred group, but was
afraid that her bank balance was not large enough; and she had, for
that reason, been rejected* I noticed there around Orage cranks of
all sorts* I believe this mission came to an end, and Orage returned
to England to try and resuscitate the New Ag@> but it was finished
beyond recall* The New Age was no longer new. The life had
ABSTRACTIONISTS AND FUTURISTS 57
gone out of it. The lovable spirit that was Orage also took flight
suddenly.
In closing this note on Hulrne and his friends, I have not men
tioned that on many an occasion Hulrne very effectively defended
me against what he considered unfair attacks. Once in the New
Age* he gave a trouncing to one A. Ludovici, who, on the
strength of having been a secretary to Rodin, imagined himself a
critic of sculpture. Hulme wielded a trenchant pen in controversy,
and was never taken in by rhetoric, however distinguished the per
son who resorted to it. I remember he had been listening to Frank
Harris one night in the Cafe Royal; Frankie, as his friends called
him, had been going on in his usual highfalutin, bombastic man
ner for a long time. Hulme turned to me and said, "The poor man!
Fie has stopped thinking."
T. E. Hulme's keenly discerning articles in the New Age about
the direction of the last war, written for good reasons under the
nom de guerre "North Staffs" will be of vivid present-day interest
to anyone who now cares to dig them up.
His death was a loss to England. The fine measuring instrument
that was his mind would have, in the last twenty years, shown up
many a dark patch of pretense, and sham, and pomposity, and
cleared away many weeds that have penetrated from being only
troublesome undergrowths into high places in the world of art,
literature, and philosophy.
* See Appendix III, "Mr. Epstein and the Critics," by T. E. Hulme.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Portraits
IN my portraits it is assumed that I start out with a definite con
ception of my sitter's character. On the contrary, 1 have no
such conception whatever in the beginning. The sitter arrives in
the studio, mounts the stand, and I begin my study. My aim, to
start with, is entirely constructive. With scientific precision I make
a quite coldly thought-out construction of the form, giving the
bony formations around the eyes, the ridge of the nose, mouth,
and cheekbones, and defining the relation of the different parts of
the skull to each other. As the work proceeds I note the expres
sion and the changes of expression, and the character of the model
begins to impress itself on me. In the end, by a natural process
of observation, the mental and physiological characteristics of the
sitter impose themselves upon the clay* This process is natural
and not preconceived. With close and intensive study come subtle
ties and fine shades. From turning the work round so as to catch
every light, comes that solidity that makes the work light-proof,
as it were. For in a work of sculpture the forms actually alter
with the change of light, not as in a painting or drawing, where
the forms only become more or less visible. In Ibsen's When
We Dead Awaken there is a sculptor depicted as a disillusioned,
embittered man, who is, I should say, the contrary of what a sculp
tor should be. I will quote what he says of his sitters (Act i).
MAIA: Do you think it is better then— do you think it is worthy of
you to do nothing at aU but a portrait-bust now mid thai?
58
PORTRAITS 59
PROF. RUBEK: (with a sly smile). They are not exactly portrait-busts
that I turn out, Maia.
MAIA: Yes, indeed they are— for the last two or three years— ever since
you finished your great group and it got out of the house
PROF. RUBEK: All the same, they are no mere portrait-busts, I assure
you.
MAIA: What are they then?
PROF. RUBEK: There is something equivocal, something cryptic, lurk
ing in and behind these busts— a secret something, that the people
themselves cannot see.
MAIA: Indeed?
PROF. RUBEK: (decisively). I alone can see it. And it amuses me un
speakably. On the surface I give them the striking likeness, as they
call it, that they all stand and gape at it in astonishment (lowers
his 'voice), but at the bottom they are all respectable, pompous,
horse-faced, and self-opinionated donkey muzzles, and lop-eared,
low-browed dog-skulls, and fatted swine-snouts and sometimes
dull brutal, bull-fronts as well.
MAIA: (indifferently). All the dear domestic animals in fact.
PROF. RUBEK: Simply the dear domestic animals, Maia. All the animals
which men have bedevilled in their own image— and which have
bedevilled men in their turn. (Empties his champagne glass and
laughs.) And it is these double-faced works of art that our ex
cellent plutocrats come and order of me. And pay for in all good
faith— and in good round figures too— almost their weight in gold,
as the saying goes.
Naturally a sculptor like this could never arrive at the truth
about a person. It is said that the sculptor as an. artist always de
picts himself in his work, even in his portraits. In only one sense
is this true, that is in the sense in which the artist's own nature
colors his outlook. To illustrate what I say, take a portrait by
Franz Hals. We observe that his outlook on humanity is cold and
detached, he observes his models without any emotions and never
warms to them. He seemed unfortunate in his sitters, as human
beings they evidently aroused in him no feeling of sympathy,
and he turned to their clothes with greater pleasure than he got
60 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
from their faces. He obviously enjoyed his own technique and
reveled in his marvelous skill
With Rembrandt the opposite seems the case. His great heart
seemed to warm toward the men and women who sat for him,
and he seemed to penetrate into their inner selves and reveal their
very souls. In children their lively joy, and in grownups the bur
den of living, their sorrow and disappointments. There is a great
wisdom in him, and his people look out of his canvasses, human
beings whose trades and businesses you cannot tell, but they have
deep human thoughts; they are not just tradesmen and shrews, as
in Hals. A beggar in the hands of Rembrandt is some ancient
philosopher, a Diogenes content in his tub; a manservant in a
borrowed cloak becomes a King of the East with splendor wreath
ing him round. So with the portraits of Goya. His men are witty,
cynical, brutal, and his women lovely, gallant, and lecherous.
Rarely have I found sitters altogether pleased with their por
traits. Understanding is rare, and the sitter usually wants to be
flattered. How Goya ever "got awayn with his superb portraits
of the Spanish Royal Family is still an inexplicable mystery.
I recall the naive expression of one of my sitters who asked me
if his nose was as I depicted it and, when I assured Mm that it was
so, cajolingly exclaimed, "Can't you cheat nature a little?"
Another will feel the bump at the back of his neck and look
ruefully at my bust. On the whole, men sitters are more vain
than women sitters, Shaw was terribly nervous about his bust;
so was Priestley; and I have found that rarely does a wife see eye
to eye with the artist. Always the artist "has just missed something
that she wants in or he has put in something that she has never
observed."
My best portraits, of course, have been those of friends and
people I have asked to sit for me. The model who just sits and
leaves the artist to his own thoughts is the most helpful one—
not the model who imagines she is inspiring the artist. It seems to
me that Mona Lisa said nothing; that "enigmatic" smile was quite
enough for Leonardo to bother about.
PORTRAITS 61
I should like to say here that with most of my portraits of men
I have been asked to work from them when they were very old,
the reason being, I suppose, that they had not attained a fame
worthy of commemoration earlier. What a relief it would be
were I to be asked to do some notable person, say, in the heyday
of his physical and mental powers. Often my models, after a few
minutes on the stand, go to sleep, and all I can see of them is the
tops of their bald heads.
I have noticed on the part of art critics a certain contempt for
the art of the portrait. Sculptors themselves do not feel this con
tempt. On the contrary, it is the ambition of many sculptors to
do a fine portrait, which they know is not easily arrived at. It is
well not to be too dogmatic as to what is sculpture and what is
not, for one must estimate as the highest expression of sculpture
those Egyptian works which were never meant to be anything but
portraits; the Cephren in Cairo, or the Sheik El Beled. Personally
I place my portrait work in as important a category as I place
any other work of mine, and I am content to be judged by it.
The successful portrait sculptor or painter, for that matter,
needs a front of brass, the hide of a rhinoceros, and all the guile
of a courtier. While I have done a certain number of portraits,
the history of those portraits is for the most part a story of failure
to please the sitters or their relatives. Even my dealers are dis
trustful, and in one instance where I had exhibited the bust of a
man and an inquiry was made with a view to purchasing a replica,
the gallery was so skeptical about the sincerity of this inquiry
that they coolly informed me they had not even taken the ad
dress of the inquirer. This, mind you, was one of my best por
traits.
When it comes to the statue of a famous man for commemora
tion, I will instance the Thomas Hardy memorial. When this me
morial was under consideration I was approached informally by
a member of the Committee, with whom I discussed the project
and undertook to do the work, stating my fee. I heard nothing
further about it, and one morning read in the Times that the
62 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
memorial had been entrusted to a sculptor. A memorial to Thomas
Hardy would have been a work that would test all the powers of
the portrait sculptor, and I had really looked forward to the com
mission. To have portrayed the great novelist so that not only his
essential physical characteristics were shown, but also some sense
of the overburdening pessimism of his soul, something of the feel
ing of human frustration, also some suggestion of that elemental
nature that is the background for Hardy's tragic characters, was
a work to call out all one's forces of evocation. The statue pro
duced was more than unfortunate. Hardy was represented as a
dejected market gardener, seated, with a trilby hat, as he might
appear on a Sunday morning deploring a bad crop of spinach.
Colonel T. E. Lawrence, who was on the Committee of the
memorial, wrote early on to Sir Sidney Cockerell of Cambridge
(August 29, 1927) concerning the proposed memorial to Hardy*
"Statues are so difficult, unless someone quite first-rate does them.
Epstein is the obvious choice." Yet after the first half-hearted
approach I was passed over.
Sometimes the sitter impresses his own conception of himself
upon the artist. This can never result in a successful work— one
that renders the character of the model. Sir Hugh Walpole was
one of these sitters. He insisted on sitting to me like a Pharaoh,
with head held high and chin stuck out. In reality Sir Hugh is the
most genial of men with sparkling, twinkling humor in his eye,
and his mouth wreathed in a kindly, genial smile. But with the
rigidity of Sir Hugh's pose I could do nothing* I knew that the
head was well modeled, but as for a portrait of my model's real
self, I never thought it was that for a moment. It was Sir Hugh
Walpole in the role of Benito Mussolini,
JOSEPH CONRAD
Muirhead Bone had arranged that I should do a bust of Conrad
for him. I had desired ten years before to work from him, and
had spoken to Richard Curie about it, 1 had been informed by
him that Conrad could not sit for me owing to the intervention
PORTRAITS 63
of a painter "friend." At the time I was deeply disappointed and
dropped the idea. But in 1924 the commission was finally arranged.
My admiration for Conrad was immense, and he had a head that
appealed to a sculptor, massive and fine at the same time, so I
jumped at the idea of working from him at last. After a meeting
in London it was arranged with him that I should go down to his
place at St. Oswalds, near Canterbury, and at my suggestion I
should live in an inn in a near-by village while working on the
bust. This arrangement always suits me best, as I prefer to be free
outside my working hours.
I set out from London on a cold March morning, feeling some
what ill and downhearted. I hated working away from my studio,
amidst uncertain and perhaps disagreeable conditions. Before be
ginning a work I am timid and apprehensive. What will the light
ing be? A good start is everything; and with a subject like Conrad
I wanted to do justice to myself. My taxi contained my working
materials, stands, clay, and working tools. It seemed a long journey
to Kent. I arrived toward dark with snow falling. Conrad met
me, and we arranged the room in which I should work, and where
I unpacked my baggage. I was then conducted across a park to
the village of Bridge and the inn where I was to stay. This inn
seemed to be of the gloomiest and coldest type. The whole mood
of the place with the sodden countryside promised a cheerless
beginning.
The next morning I began the work. At the end of the sitting
I did not know what to think of it, and felt altogether wretched.
In the evening I wired for my five-year-old Peggy-Jean to come.
The second day, on the arrival of Peggy-Jean, things looked better.
Conrad was an absorbing study. He took posing seriously and
gave me good long sittings until one o'clock, when we lunched
and talked. From the beginning he called me Cher Maltre, em
barrassing me by this mode of address from a much older man
who was a great master of his own craft. His manners were courtly
and direct, but his neurasthenia forced him at times to outbursts
of rage and irritability with his household, which quickly sub-
64 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
sided. I already had a fairly clear notion as to how I should treat
the bust. A sculptor had previously made a bust of him which
represented him as an open-necked, romantic, out-of-door type
of person. In appearance he was the very opposite. His clothes
were immaculately conventional, and his collar enclosed his neck
like an Iron Maiden's vice or a garroter's grip. He was worried
if his hair and beard were not trim and neat as became a sea cap
tain. There was nothing shaggy or Bohemian about him. His
glance was keen despite the drooping of one eyelid. He was the
sea captain, the officer, and in our talks he emphasized the word
"responsibility." Responsibility weighed on him, weighed him
down. He used the word again and again, and one immediately
thought of Lord Jim— the conscience suffering at the evasion of
duty* It may have been because I met him late in life that Conrad
gave me a feeling of defeat; but defeat met with courage.
He was crippled with rheumatism, crotchety, nervous, and ill.
He said to me, "I am finished." There was pathos in his pulling
out of a drawer his last manuscript to show me that he was still
at work. There was no triumph in his manner, however; and he
said that he did not know whether he would ever finish it* "I am
played out," he said; "played out."
We talked after the sittings, mostly in the afternoons when we
had tea together, and Conrad was full of reminiscences about him
self. We were generally alone together. There in his country
house he seemed to live alone, although the house was filled with
servants. A few visitors came at the week ends, but hf seemed
a lonely, brooding man, with none too pleasant thoughts*
He was a good sitter, always strictly punctual, and he stuck to
the stand, giving me plenty c f opportunity for work and study,
I was with him for twenty-one days. Once, while posing, he had
a heart attack, and he felt faint* His manservant brought him a
stiff whisky, and he insisted oa renewing the sitting. 1 had no
hesitations while at work, owing to his very sympathetic attitude.
A doubtful or critical attitude of the sitter vdll sometimes hang
like a dark cloud over the work and retard it* Conrad's sympathy
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PORTRAITS 65
and good will were manifest. He would beam at me with a pleased
expression and forget his rheumatism and the tree outside the win
dow at which he railed. The tree was large and beautiful, but to
Conrad it was a source of misery.
The house was roomy, and set among low hills. To Conrad it
was a prison set in a swamp. He must move. He must find an
other house. He would set out in his car, one step from the door
to the sealed vehicle to search for the new house. No outdoors
for him. The sea captain hated out of doors, and never put his
nose into it.
To return to the bust; Conrad had a demon expression in the
left eye, while his right eye was smothered by a drooping lid,
but the eyes glowed with a great intensity of feeling. The droop
ing, weary lids intensified the impression of brooding thought.
Th<=> "vhole head revealed the man who had suffered much—a head
set on shoulders hunched about his ears. When he was seated, the
shoulders gave the impression of a pedestal for the head. His
gnarled hands were covered with woolen mittens, and his habit
of tugging at his beard when in conversation or in thought gave
me the idea of including the hands in the bust; but Conrad re
coiled from so human a document.
On anything connected with the plastic arts, Conrad frankly
confessed ignorance, although perhaps to flatter me he attempted
to draw a parallel between the processes of building up a work
of sculpture and that of writing a novel Of music he said he knew
nothing, nor did it interest him; but he admitted being impressed
by the sound of drums coming across the waters in Africa at
night.
The walls of his house carried a few indifferent family portraits
in oil. He turned over lovingly the family portrait album of his
ancestors: his father, a distinguished Polish nobleman named
Korzeniowski, who had suffered under the Czar; photographs of
himself very young, which showed him as being extremely hand
some.
66 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
We usually had tea in his small cozy study. On one occasion
when there was company, I recall having tea in a large, grand,
shuttered room with French furniture very conventionally arranged.
Conrad was strongly feudal in his ideas, and when I complained
of the servile attitude of the villagers around about, he said that
they were happier so. My reference to the villagers was occasioned
by an incident which happened at the Bridge. I had remarked
on the astonishing velocity of a racing car which had driven
through the village at race-track speed, scattering children and
chickens. At the local barber's I mentioned this, and ventured to
remark that the children were in danger of their lives. The barber
said that in fact several children had been killed, but that the
racing magnate had paid the parents handsomely and all the vil
lagers looked to him for employment. The report that Conrad
refused a knighthood because it was offered by a Socialist gov
ernment would, if true, bear out my observation about his feudal
cast of mind.
I looked at Conrad's bookshelf. He had not many books, in no
sense a library; but he had a complete edition of Turgenev in
English. We talked of books, and I mentioned Melville's Moby
Dick, expecting him to be interested. Conrad burst into a furious
denunciation of it. "He knows nothing of the sea. It's fantastic,
ridiculous," he said. When I mentioned that the work was sym
bolical and mystical: "Mystical, my eye. My old boots are mys
tical" Meredith? His characters are ten feet high, D. H, Lawrence
had started well but had gone wrong. "Filth. Nothing but ob
scenities." For Henry James he had unqualified admiration. Of
his own novels he said it was a toss-up at one time as to whether
he would write in English or French. He emphasized the amount
of labor he gave to a novel to get it to satisfy himself,
At a few of the sittings Conrad dictated letters to the secretary,
His English was strongly foreign, with a very guttural accent,
so that his secretary frequently failed to get the right word, which
made Conrad growl. I would try to detach myself from the work
to Esteru His composition was beautiful Sentence followed sen-
PORTRAITS 67
tence in classic "Conrad," totally unlike his conversational manner,
which was free, easy, and colloquial.
The work on the bust was nearing completion. One day, at
the end of the sittings, Mrs. Conrad appeared at the door to see
it. She gave one glance and fled. Perhaps a wife, a lover, can never
see what the artist sees. At any rate, the fact is that they rarely
ever do. Perhaps a really mediocre artist has more chance of suc
cess in this respect. When George Bernard Shaw was sitting to
me I asked him why he had given sittings to a very incompetent
artist. Shaw exclaimed: "Why, he is a fine portrait painter— my
wife, on entering the room where the portrait was, actually mis
took it for myself."
Conrad's own opinion about my portrait of himself was con
veyed in a letter he wrote to Richard Curie, his biographer and
literary executor. "The bust of Ep has grown truly monumental.
It is a marvelously effective piece of sculpture, with even some
thing more than a masterly interpretation in it. It is wonderful
to go down to posterity like that." Later Sir Muirhead Bone of
fered the bust to the National Portrait Gallery. It was refused.
At last the bust was completed. I wired my molder to come
and carry it away to London to be cast. I said good-by to the
old Master and traveled with the bust. Five months later I opened
a newspaper and read that Joseph Conrad was dead.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
In 1933 rumors of the intended assassination of Einstein caused
his flight to England. He left Belgium and was a refugee under
Commander Locker-Lampson's care at a camp near Cromer. I had
some correspondence with Commander Locker-Lampson about
my working from Einstein, and we arranged for a week of sittings.
I traveled to Cromer, and the following morning was driven out
to the camp, situated in a secluded wild spot very near the sea.
Einstein appeared dressed very comfortably in a pullover with
his wild hair floating in the wind. His glance contained a mixture
of the humane, the humorous, and the profound. This was a com-
68 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
bination which delighted me. He resembled the ageing Rembrandt.
The sittings took place in a small hut, which was filled with a
piano so that I could hardly turn round. I asked the girl attend
ants, of whom there were several, secretaries of Commander
Locker-Lampson, to remove the door, which they did; but they
facetiously asked whether I would like the roof off next. I thought
I should have liked that too, but I did not demand it, as the at
tendant "angels" seemed to resent a little my intrusion into the
retreat of their Professor. After the third clay they thawed, and
I was offered beer at the end of the sitting.
I worked for two hours every morning, and at the first sitting
the Professor was so surrounded, with tobacco smoke from his pipe
that I saw nothing. At the second sitting I asked him to smoke in
the interval, Einstein's manner was full of charm and bonhomie.
He enjoyed a joke and had many a jibe at the Nazi professors, one
hundred of whom in a book had condemned his theory. "Were I
wrong," he said, "one professor would have been quite enough."
Also, in speaking of Nazis he once said, "I thought I was a physi
cist, I did not bother about being non-Aryan until Hitler made
me conscious of it,"
At the end of the sittings he would sit down at the piano and
play, and once he took a violin and went outside and scraped
away. He looked altogether like a? wandering gypsy, but the sea
ak was damp, the violin execrable, and he gave tip. The Nazis had
taken his own good violin when they confiscated his property in
Germany.
Einstein watched my work with a kind of naive wonder and
seemed to sense that I was doing something good of him.
The sittings unfortunately had to come to a close, as Einstein
was to go up to London to make a speech at the Albert Hall and
then leave for America. I could have gone on with the work. It
seemed to me a good start but, as so often happens, the work had
to be stopped before I had carried it to completion-
Later I exhibited the head in London in December, 1933* Dur
ing the exhibition, while the Gallery was without attendants for a
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PORTRAITS 69
short time, it was discovered on the foor, fortunately only bent
on its stone pedestal, which could ^asily be remedied. Who had
overthrown if? This ve sion was bought by the Chantry bequest,
and is at pre \t in the Tate Gallery.
BERNARD VAN DIEREN (1915-1937)
I worked from Bernard Van Dieren when I first met him in
1915. He was strikingly handsome, and the head I did of him re
sembled superficially one of Napoleon's generals; but there was
a quality of force allied to something mystical, far different and
beyond the vulgar good looks of the dandy generals of the First
Empire— at any rate as they are depicted outside the Louvre. The
head expresses this mystical quality, and later I worked from him
in 1919 as he lay ill in bed, one of his periodical lyings-up which
sometimes lasted months on end. I was only visiting him, but as
we talked the desire came over me to work from him. I hurried
home and collected some clay in a bucket and came back. I made
a mask. The mask was filled with suffering, but it was so noble
and had such a high quality of intellectual life that I thought of
him as the suffering Christ, and developed the mask into a head,
then into a bust with arms, and extended it again; and so made
my first image of Christ in bronze.
I made a third study from Van Dieren in 1936, about a year
before he died. He was very ill, by turns hot and cold, and very
faint; yet he had a noble emperor's air which is in the bust.
There is bitterness in the head, frustration— a genius neglected,
misunderstood; one whose work will have to wait ;n our welter
of vulgarity, noise and opportunism before it comes to be under
stood, for qualities that our age does not care for. I think of his
quartets, and can only compare them to Beethoven's posthumous
quartets. Not that they are influenced in any way, but that they
contain a similar quality of pain, so intense, so beautiful in ex
pression that in our own period they are unique.
70 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
LORD ROTHERMERE
I met Lord Rothermere on the Aquitmia on my return from
New York in January, 1928. He then asked me if I would do his
bust in London. Of this meeting with Rothermere on the Aqui-
tmia I recall a dinner which he gave on board, at which the great
steel magnate, Charles Schwab, and P. G. Wodehouse, the English
humorist, were present. Lord Rothermere asked Schwab how
much he thought his fortune amounted to, and Schwab answered
very impressively that he "really couldn't compute it." I was, of
course, referred to as the "greatest" sculptor in the world, and in
the eyes of these monied men, that meant the sculptor who made
the most money* Wodehouse discussed stocks and shares, and alto
gether I got a strange impression of the values that rich and suc
cessful men place on things, and of how they are interested in
wealth, which to an artist is only a means to finer ends. Lord
Rothermere, although he prided himself upon owning a fine col
lection of Old Masters, answered when I asked him what Rem-
brandts he possessed, "But Rembrandt isn't any good, is he?*'
The sittings in London for the bust characteristically began
with a film company's making a film of myself and the sitter at
work- Altogether the proceedings went on, as it were, in public, as
Rothermere liked company and conducted his various businesses
in my studio. I did not mind this, as it showed the sitter animated
by subjects that really interested him- 1 have long ago been forced
into the habit of ignoring those around me when at work and
thinking only of the work in hand. Financiers and millions of
pounds were discussed, Rothermere was monumental and offered
strange psychological problems to the artist Also, he possessed
a natural sense of humor and did not expect me to flatter him*
He jocularly remarked that I was not making an Ivor Novello of
him. The work progressed, but my model had a disconcerting
habit of leaving for foreign parts suddenly, and sending me a wire
that he would turn up in about a week or fortnight and "join
me ia the clay bin," as he put it.
PORTRAITS 7*
This habit of the wire finally decided me to call it a day, and
the bust was declared finished.
Rothermere pretended to no knowledge of modern art, but col
lected Old Masters. I will say that when he showed me these, I
was not very much impressed. A critic had collected them for
him. This critic let me see that he was eager that I should not
show him up too much to Lord Rothermere over the pictures.
On the occasion when the collection was shown to me, one eve
ning at dinner at Lord Rothermere's at Sunningdale, the critic
waylaid me previously and made a personal appeal to me not to
criticize the pictures to Lord Rothermere. To my amusement,
he added that Lord Rothermere could be very useful to both of
us. The use of "us" made me laugh.
The occasion of this dinner was the placing of Rothermere's
bust in the Sunningdale house, which took place five years after
I had finished the work. Rothermere had apparently forgotten
the bust for that period. This bust, with its somewhat formidable
character, seemed to have to be handled carefully, for when I had
proposed exhibiting it on some previous occasion, I was advised
not to do so, as a General Election was coming on and it might
possibly exert some baneful influence on events.
Lord Rothermere's secretaries seemed particularly upset by the
work. This I take as tribute to the sincerity and truth of the ren
dering of the character. What these "yes men" expected me to
do, I do not quite know; but their hostility was expressed quite
frankly. I think of it as one of my best portraits.
LORD BEAVERBROOK
Isador Ostrer wished to make a birthday present to his friend,
Lord Beaverbrook; and the Canadian peer entered my studio one
morning very like the stage hero in a musical comedy, dramatic
and breezy. At the time I had the floor covered with newspapers,
for a molder was in working. Instantly Beaverbrook asked petu
lantly, "I do not see my'papers here." I replied, "Do you imagine
I would have your papers 00 the floor to be trodden on?"
7* LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
We started work. He had a secretary with him, and had his
own papers read out to him from the first to the last inch, so I
saw the man in action. Like Rothermere, he also had a good sense
of humor, and would express astonishment now and then that he
gave up so much of his time to an artist. Then he would jump up
and make an exit as dramatic as his entrance had been.
I succeeded in making a sketch of him, which he shows in the
entrance of the Daily Express office in Fleet Street. When the head
was finished, he asked the editor of the Daily Express to come and
see it. Beaverbrook pointed to the head and said meaningly, "A
present from a friend/' The other just replied, "Humph," and
they left the studio.
During the sittings, Lord Beaverbrook, in looking at the works
in the studio, professed to see a diabolical spirit in them, as if my
sole mission was to express evil. This attitude amused me, as some
of the works are as candid and innocent as the models themselves.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Shaw sat on condition that I was commissioned to do the work.
He thought I ought to benefit materially and not just do his bust
for its own sake. Orage arranged a commission for me from Mrs.
Blanche Grant, an American, Shaw sat with exemplary patience
and even eagerness. He walked to my studio every day, and was
punctual and conscientious. He wisecracked, of course* In matters
of art he aired definite opinions, mostly wrong; and I often had
to believe that he wished to say smart, clever things to amuse me.
On seeing a huge block of stone, unworked in the studio, he asked
me what I intended to do with it* Not wishing to tell him exactly
what my plans were, I merely remarked that 1 had a plan, "What!"
he exclaimed, "You have a plan? You shouldn't have a plan* I
never work according to a plan* Each day I begin with new ideas
totally different from the day before." As if a sculptor with a six-
ton block to carve could alter his idea daily! Shaw believed that
sculptors put into their portraits their own characteristics* and
of a bust done of him by a Prince he remarked that it contained
PORTRAITS 73
something very aristocratic. This was amusing in view of the fact
that this particular bust was peculiarly commonplace,
One day Robert Flaherty brought along the Aran boatman,
Tiger King, who was the chief character in the film, Man of Arm,
written about fishermen. In the studio, when Tiger King was in
troduced, Shaw immediately started talking to him on how to sail
a boat, what happened in storms, and generally instructed him in
sea lore.
Shaw was puzzled by the bust of himself and often looked at it
and tried to make it out. He believed that I had made a kind of
primitive barbarian of him, something altogether uncivilized and
really a projection of myself, rather than of him. I never tried
to explain the bust to him, and I think that there are in it elements
so subtle that they would be difficult to explain. Nevertheless, I
believe this to be an authentic and faithful rendering of George
Bernard Shaw physically and psychologically. I leave out any
question of aesthetics, as that would be beyond Shaw's compre
hension. When the bust was finished, we were filmed; and Shaw
was wonderful as an actor, taking the filming very seriously.
In 1934, when the work in bronze was done, I offered Shaw a
copy of the bust through Orage, but was told that Shaw could
not think of having it in his house. This I believe was because of
Mrs. Shaw's dislike of it.
Throughout my life in England, Shaw has been an outspoken
champion for my work, on several occasions giving the great
British public lively smacks on my behalf. I will not say that he
understands what I have made. He seems deficient in all sense of
the plastic, but has a lively notion of how stupid the newspapers
can be over new works of sculpture or painting. He is generous
to yoting talent, but seems likely to be taken in by cleverness or
pretense. I would say that Shaw is not really interested in the
plastic arts, although he can be got to take a passing or journalistic
interest in controversial work. On one occasion, on visiting an
exhibition of paintings of Epping Forest, not knowing what to say,
he asked me if I had done the paintings with brushes.
74 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
THE EMPEROR OF ABYSSINIA
Haile Selassie had arrived from Jerusalem an exile, and Com
mander Locker-Lampson asked me to do a study of the Emperor
which might be used to further the cause of Abyssinia. The Com
mander fondly believed that I might do a work which in repro
duction would be popular and raise funds for the heroic struggle,
As it turned out, my bust had no popularity and was only a matter
of great expense to myself.
I arrived at the Abyssinian Embassy with my clay and things,
prepared to work. The hall was filled with a strange hubbub and
excitement, and a dispute was going on with a chauffeur who was
insisting on a payment down for car hire— alas! the finances of
the Emperor were not of that fabulous size reported in newspapers.
I knew Haile Selassie's appearance from photographs, but when
I saw him advancing through the rooms of the house next door to
the Abyssinian Embassy, at which I worked, I was astonished at
his calm air of dignity. A cream-colored shirt garment of very
soft Abyssinian material showed where it appeared swathed about
his neck, and over this was the beautiful cloak either of dark blue
or dove gray. His suite followed him, I had already produced my
model's throne, a box used by all of my sitters and, I am afraid,
the only throne the Emperor will occupy for some time since his
forced departure from Addis Ababa.
On our meeting we delivered deep bows to each other, and
without further preliminaries Haile Selassie ascended the box and
I started to work while the Court stood around. While I worked,
I noticed that the Emperor had the habit every few minutes of
casting nervous glances behind him over one shoulder or the other.
This apprehension on his part was most suggestive* His fine, hand
some features were lit by a pair of melancholy eyes which seemed
tired and strained, and at the time I worked from him he still suf
fered from the effects of recent harassing and painfel events. The
younger boy was much amused at my pellets of clay and called
them maccarofa.
HAILE SKLASSIK, KMPEROR OF ABYSSINIA
PORTRAITS 75
For my purpose, Haile Selassie was at his best talking in Amharic
to his immediate followers, Ras Kassa, a tremendous giant of a man
with an immense bald head, and Herouy, who was dressed in
European clothes. At times the Emperor wrote in fine Amharic
characters. All his movements were distinguished and firm. It was
strange to me to be, as it seemed, at an African Court in mid-
Kensington. On approaching him, his people prostrated themselves
to the ground.
One morning when I arrived, there was no Emperor, and I
hunted through the house for someone to let me know of his
whereabouts. Meeting a handsome blonde girl on the staircase, I
asked for the young medical man, an Abyssinian who usually
arranged the sittings for me. She answered in German and said
that she would find den schonen Doktor. I suppose that a beautiful
Italian servant would have been more suspect.
When she found my intermediary, he laughed nervously and
conducted me to the door of the Emperor's apartments, where his
suite were mostly seated on the ground or on the staircase, and
he let me know that the Emperor was still in his dressing gown,
but would be with me immediately. I liked and accepted this mix
ture of formality and easygoing patriarchial casualness, and only
hoped to get on with my study. The Emperor's hands especially
attracted my attention. They were fine, even feminine. He was
altogether delicately fashioned, although this delicacy was tem
pered with a Semitic virility. I made what I considered an inter
esting study, although an unfinished one.
The work is still in my possession.
J. B. PRIESTLEY
I am always aware of the feelings of my sitters toward the work.
Sometimes they say frankly what they think, and if they do not
say anything, their regard often betrays their feelings. Naturally,
a critical and unfavorable attitude makes it difficult for me, and
I wish to God I hadn't begun, or rather that I hadn't the necessity
for taking on, a portrait* In the case of the bust of Air. Priestley,
76 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
he seemed none too pleased with the progress of the work, but
one morning he came briskly into the studio and said:
"It's this way, Epstein. I look upon this bust as an insurance for
both of us against getting forgotten. If you get forgotten, there
is your bust of me. If I am forgotten, there is your bust of me."
When Mrs. Priestley came to see the bust, she was evidently
dissatisfied, but said nothing until she moved round to the back,
when she said: "Well, at any rate the back is unmistakable."
This was not so crashing as the remark >f a sculptor who, look
ing at a small head of Enver that I had brought into an exhibition,
exclaimed: "What a beautiful bronze casting!"
CLARE SHERIDAN'S LUNCHEON PARTY
When I arrived, Clare Sheridan was engaged on a statuette of
H. G. Wells. Wells was sitting on a stand rolling a pellet of clay
in his hands, a procedure which would have maddened me had
I been working from him.
The sculptor asked me what I thought of the sketch, and I
pointed out that one of the essentials of Wells' facial make-up was
his overhanging eyebrows, which she had not put in. That addi
tion in. modeling gave It the Wellsian look. The luncheon that
followed was made up of quite a large gathering, and had some
interesting personalities- Opposite me sat Lord Birkenhead. He
looked duEer than any man I had ever seen, with his cigar sticking
out of the comer of his mouth. A Lady Mitchclcm, who was re
ported to be very wealthy and was involved in an inheritance case,
known as the "Mitchelem Millions/' shouted over at me, "And
when am I going to sit for you, Mr* Epstein?" I answered gallantly,
"Will tomorrow do?" Immediately my hostess shouted out, "You
are sitting for me tomorrow, Lady Mitchelcm." 1 then said, "Will
Thursday do?" A painter whose name I forget shouted out, "You
are sitting for me on Thursday, Lady Mitchelem." I suggested
Friday, and Mr, Ambrose McEvoy, the painter, then said, "You
are sitting for me on Friday, Lady Mitchelem*" With that I gave
PORTRAITS 77
up. A very striking looking lady, the Marchesa Casati, was at the
luncheon; and I asked her to sit for me, which she consented to
do the next day.
The Marchesa arrived in a taxicab at two o'clock and left it
waiting for her. We began the sittings, and her Medusa-like head
kept me busy until nightfall. It was snowing outside, and a report
came in that the taxi man had at length made a declaration. He
did not care if it was Epstein and if it was a countess; he would
not wait any longer. On hearing this, Casati shouted, "He is a
Bolshevik! Ask him to wait a little longer." He was given tea
and a place by the fire and shown the bookshelf.
The winter light had failed, and I had many candles brought
in. They formed a circle round my weird sitter with the fire in the
grate piled high to give more light. The tireless Marchesa, with
her overlarge blood-veined eyes, sat with a basilisk stare; and, as
if to bear out her epithet of "Bolshevik" her taxi man picked out
for himself Brothers K^ramazov to read, and ceased to protest.
The Medusa-like mask was finished the next day.
The Marchesa had strange tastes. She loved snakes, and had
a python who crept into an oven. Inadvertently the oven was shut
and lit up, and the poor python was baked. Then a young man
at her home in Capri was to be an antique god, and she gilded
him all over. This modern type who was sitting to me was at the
same time sophisticated and childish. Her clothes were bizarre and
original. Once she appeared in a frock composed entirely of white
feathers, which, as she moved rapidly along, molted into a cloud
behind her.
At dinner she wore white silk pajamas, and a peacock's feather
rose from her shoulder parallel with her head. She would argue
for any perversity rather than countenance normal behavior. In
art, of course, her taste was also for the perverse, and she was
enamored of a mask I had done of Meurn and coveted it, but
was determined to have it in some odd material, glass lit up from
within, which I wouldn't agree to.
78 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
ADMIRAL LORD FISHER
Early during the war, Francis Dodd, R.A., asked me to do a
bust of Lord Fisher for the Duchess of Hamilton. It was to be
begun that very morning and "would I get my clay and other
things together and start?" I packed everything into a cab and
was taken to the Duchess of Hamilton's flat in the St. James's
district.
Fisher had an extraordinary appearance. His light eyes with
strange colors were set in a face like Ivory parchment, and his
iron-gray hair was cut short and bristled on his head. He was
short, but had the appearance of combative sturdiness,
In posing he was tireless. He began at ten every morning,
lunched at one, and resumed sittings immediately after lunch, then
went on until six o'clock in the evening.
During the afternoon, Fisher would take a short nap of about
five minutes and waken refreshed and full of vigor. He talked
incessantly and watched the progress of the bust through a looking-
glass, when he was turned away from the clay,
I asked him why he wanted me to do his bust. He replied that
when Francis Dodd suggested me, he asked my nationality and
heard that I was of Polish origin* One of his greatest Inventors
at the Admiralty was a Pole, and that was enough for him.
He was the typical man of war. He made no bones about It.
War was terrible, and should be terrible, and some of his char
acteristic sayings bear out his ruthless outlook. Of an enemy he
would say that uhe would make a wife a widow, and his home a
dunghill" He continuously quoted Scripture, but characteristically
only from the Old Testament. Proverbs fell from his lips copiously.
I was impressed by his mental energy, and there was a look in
his eyes that was dangerous. At the time I worked from him he
had been forced out of office, and seemed pleased at the unsatis
factory conduct of naval affairs. Oae morning he came into the
room where I worked, filled with sardonic satisfaction. The Battle
of Jutland had just been fought. Fisher read out to me aa message
PORTRAITS 79
from Lord Nelson" on the event which he said he had received.
It did not spare the Jacks-in-Office who, he alleged, had allowed
the German Fleet to skedaddle back to harbor. I enjoyed working
from him, and he understood and appreciated my active interest
in the bust.
When it came to his shoulders and uniform completely covered
with decorations, he referred to himself as a "Christmas tree." He
was proudest of his Order of Merit. In his luncheon talks he would
often speak of himself as a poor man. He could have been rich.
Opportunities were offered to him outside the Navy, but he con
sidered that he had given his life to the Navy, and he was satisfied
with that.
Aided by Fisher's intensive methods of work, I finished a large
bust in a week. He seemed very much pleased with it. This bust
belongs to the Duchess of Hamilton. A version of it is in the War
Museum.
Some years later, walking along Piccadilly, opposite Green
Park, I saw Lord Fisher being wheeled along in a bath chair by a
nurse. He was looking very much changed, and very ill; a sharp
and painful contrast to the vigorous man I had modeled.
"DON ROBERTO"
Imagine Don Quixote walking about your studio and sitting
for his portrait. This was R. B. Cunninghame-Graham, and you
could see him on horseback any day in Hyde Park on his small
American mustang, seated in a high saddle, riding along Rotten
Row in a bowler hat. He was no poseur, as many imagine. His
distinguished appearance and bearing were natural. No man could
have easier manners, be more debonair and courteous. At my
studio he was always the center of a group, and his anecdotes and
conversation were delivered in the same incisive, stylistic manner
in which he wrote. His candor was refreshing. He had been in
Parliament years before, but the probity of his character could not
stand an assembly where conformity and chicanery were the order
of the day. I should have gone on with his head and made it into
8o LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
a bust and full figure and mounted it on a horse, and had it set
up in Hyde Park, where his ghost now rides. He had been in
strumental in getting me the commission for the Hudson Memorial;
and when I was at work on it in Epping Forest, he came to see it.
Afterwards we walked through Monk Wood, and Don Roberto
with astonishing agility jumped the brooks at the age of seventy-
three. You imagined around his belt (he scorned braces) Colt re
volvers, and with his air of a hidalgo of Spain, he carried also a
whiff of the American Wild West into London studios and draw
ing rooms. In the head I modeled he seems to sniff the air blowing
from the Sierras, and his hair is swept by a breeze from afar.
Cunninghame-Graham was a great friend of Conrad, When I
had made the bust of the latter, he brought along the Polish
ambassador to see it, and proposed there and then to start a fund
for its purchase for Poland with a contribution of his own, but his
enthusiasm was not catching and nothing came of it. Salud! Don
Roberto Quixote.
AUGUSTUS JOHN
John sat to me in my Guildford Street studio. I had wanted to
do a head of him for some time, and as he had made two etchings
of myself and several drawings, I was eager to do him justice. He
had sat to a number of artists, including a sculptor, who had made
him look, as I told John, like a future president of the Royal
Academy— all dignity and well-trimmed beard. John's head had
plenty of dignity, but there was much more to it than that, and I
wanted to capture a certain wildness, an untamed quality that is
the essence of the man* I made a sketch, and then something In
terfered—I forget what; amd so the work remained a sketch but a
vital one. Lady Tredegar owned this head of John, but I believe
it Is now in the possession of her son, Lord Tredegar, Of some
persons I feel that one work is not enough to represent them, and
that is what I feel about John's head. What a miserable collection
of works for the most part is that of the National Portrait Gallery!
Were you to try and find an authentic portrait of your hero there,
"
R. B. CUNNlNdHAME-GRAHAM.
PORTRAITS 81
you would only come across someone's silly flattery. Lord Byron
is the "corsair" of stage limelight, and Shelley looks a most "in
effectual angel" depicted by a most ineffectual limner. For reality,
you have to go to Holbein and look at that straightforward por
trait of Henry which looks at you in all its unblinking brutality.
Reynolds' heroics, and Gainsborough's idealism, and the whole
port-wine-complexioned school of Raeburn, and the pink nymphs
of Romney, are totally divorced from reality. Rornney and most of
his colleagues give one no real picture of the men and women
of the period, skillful as the painting often is, particularly that of
Thomas Lawrence, who preceded our Sargent and Lazlo.
There should be a special fund to engage artists who are capable
of doing so to paint portraits or model busts of our "great" ones,
if greatness can be spotted anywhere; or if that is too responsible
a task for a committee, there might be a ballot for the members
of our "Hall of Fame." I do not know what qualifies a candidate
at present for that august distinction.
DOLORES (1921-1923)
My first work from Dolores I abandoned and thought a failure.
And yet, years afterward, when I came across the plaster again, I
realized that it was a very vivid and spontaneous sketch of her, and
I cast it in bronze. It became instantly popular. This study, which
shows her in a laughing, mocking mood, is now in the Tate Gal
lery.
The second study was again a failure, I thought; but this I fol
lowed up with a bust which was tragic and magnificent. Dolores
was a model who was extremely suggestible, and after I made this
bust, she always strutted about, keeping her arms folded in the
pose of the bust, with the same tragic and aloof expression fixed
upon her face; and she took great care that she never relaxed into
those careless smiles of the first head. In the studio she was the
devoted model, nevef allowing anything to interfere with posing,
taking it seriously, a religious rite. She became the High Priestess
of Beauty; and this role she carried to ridiculous lengths. She even
82 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
gave as an excuse to a magistrate before whom she appeared for
some indiscreet conduct in Piccadilly, that my being in America
had disorientated her, and this was taken as sufficient excuse to
gether with a small fine, by a magistrate indulgent to a Phryne of
modern times.
In 1923 I made one more head of her, which I think is the best
work I did from the beautiful and fantastic Dolores. Later I can
remember how, passing through Piccadilly, a strange vehicle of the
period of 1840 or so met my gaze, complete with high-stepping
horses, coachman with whip, and footman. Dolores was mounted
on a high seat with folded arms and the air of a queen as she
passed majestically—to advertise some perfume or cosmetic. Her
sang-froid carried her into some strange adventures, but the use
she made of my name was sometimes embarrassing, as when she
married a colored gentleman and sent out the invitations to the
reception in my name. Her endless amours were a boon to Fleet
Street journalists, and when she died suddenly of cancer they must
have regretted the passing of a character so colorful and so acces
sible.
Her memoirs, published by the Hearst Press in America, were
packed full of inventions conceived by the not very scrupulous
brains of the scribblers who seized on her notoriety and exploited it.
THE GIRL FROM SENEGAL
One day a girl passing in the street attracted my attention by her
delicate and aristocratic beauty, The girl was of African origin,
and she did not resent my asking her to pose for me, which she did
with a naturalness that was explained when she told me of her en
gagement to marry a French painter.
She was a Senegalese, and she said her name was Madeleine
Bechet She told me she was the daughter of a French officer mar
ried to a Senegalese. I spoke to her of a book I had just read because
her name astonished me. The book was called A Tracers Le Sudan,
and was written by a French officer called A, Bechet- This story
recounted how the officer watching a caravan of captured slaves,
PORTRAITS 83
had rescued a girl of twelve, who was the daughter of a Senegalese
chief. He bought her off and looked after her, educated her, and
finally married her. This model of mine was the daughter of this
French officer by the slave girl who later became his wife.
I gave the name "The Girl from Senegal" to the bust. Later she
became a governess for a short time to Peggy-Jean, but the English
climate was too cold for her. In midsummer she would be wrapped
up in everything she could wear, and still shiver. I was glad for this
reason when she determined to go and join her fiance in Tunis.
MOYSHEH OYVED
The poet-jeweler was sitting to me for his head. My models,
more especially Sunita, would go to his cameo corner shop, which
was like Aladdin's Cave, and Moysheh would deck them out in
Oriental jewelry. Sunita would appear like the Queen of Sheba, and
an amusing story was told by Moysheh himself of how, one sunny
day, he and Sunita were in a taxicab in the city and, as they were
caught up in some ceremonial procession, were mistaken for royalty
itself; and Sunita bowed her regal way through crowds.
I liked working from him and transferring to clay his sensitive,
nervous features. There was something fluttering and naive about
his expression, like that of a charming child.
One morning he seemed more than usually nervous, and I noticed
his face getting paler and paler. The strain of sitting is harder on
some persons than on others, although I try to put sitters at their
ease. The truth is that the steady gaze of the sculptor is somewhat
disconcerting. I asked Moysheh Oyved what was the matter with
him, and he said, "I am not used to sitting here and doing nothing.
Can't I sell you something?" Some of his books have this same
whimsical humor. His bust is one of the most successful I have
done, and is now, I believe, in the Museum of Tel-Aviv.
RABINDRANATH TAGORE
"I am he that sitteth among the poorest, the loneliest, and the
lost,"
84 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
This quotation from Gitanjali was strangely contradicted by my
sitter, whose handsome, commanding presence inspired in his fol
lowers awe and a craven obedience. On entering my house I
brought to him for presentation a little Indian boy, Enver, who was
living with me. He was the son of Sunita. Tagore looked at him
and asked, "A Hindu?" I said, "No, a Moslem," whereat Rabin-
dranath lifted his eyes to the ceiling and passed on.
He posed in silence, and I worked well. On one occasion two
American women came to visit him, and I remember how they
left him, retiring backward, with their hands raised in worship.
At the finish of the sittings usually two or three disciples, who
waited in an anteroom for him, took him back to his hotel. He
carried no money and was conducted about like a holy man. On
one occasion the disciples did not turn up until too late, and I had
my handyman take him back to the Hyde Park Hotel in a cab,
I can imagine the wrath visited on the heads of those disciples. His
indignation could be emphatic. A flock of them were on the hotel
steps when the cab arrived.
The manners of Tagore were aloof, dignified, and cold; and if
lie needed anything only one word of command to his disciples
escaped him.
It has been remarked that my bust of him rests upon the beard,
an unconscious piece of symbolism*
A.K.C. (KING'S COUNSELLOR)
I had undertaken to do a portrait of a K.C during the war. He
was a man of handsome appearance, somewhat Spanish in features;
and I remarked on his Jewish characteristics, which he did not
deny. In working from him I sensed cruelty and the legal mind.
One day I remarked on what seemed to me to be a savage sentence
pronounced on an old woman for throwing some crumbs of bread
out to the sparrows, a sentence of imprisonment. My sitter said,
"Yes, and quite right too. I would have given her a heavier sen
tence.'* I felt so sick at this that I would not go on with the portrait.
PORTRAITS 85
THE pth DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH
(1923-1925)
A description of the genesis, duration, and finish of a bust of
this nature is of interest, as it exhibits very clearly the relation of
the sculptor to the sitter of the ordinary sort. My reading of the
Duke's character, the study of his appearance, and regard for
the destination of the bust brought about a series of characteristic
events. The bust was to decorate a niche in the entrance hall of
Blenheim Palace, and it was thought that sittings given in the
Palace itself would materially help to solve the problems involved.
I made fairly good progress with the head, which I wanted to get
first, before beginning the bust. I completed the head and started
on the bust; and that was where the trouble began.
The Duke thought he would look best as a Roman bust with
nude shoulders, but to my mind it was best as a man of his period
and I was not particular as to what the costume should be as long
as it was something that he wore. The Duchess agreed with me,
but we came to no mutual understanding; and I gave up working
on the bust after an acrimonious debate which ended in ill-temper
on both sides.
Two years later, the Duchess asked me to resume work on the
portrait, and it was agreed that the Duke should be depicted in
his Robes of the Garter with the hands included.
The entrance hall at Blenheim Palace is a vast lofty place, and
there was sculpture of other Marlboroughs in it, mostly in marble.
I had planned a bronze, and resumed the sittings in London. All
went well. The Duke brought along his Garter Robes. To help
the sittings along, a manservant of mine called Sydney wore the
Robes at times, as his size and figure were very like the Duke's.
Sydney was a typical cockney ne'er-do-well, and later I saw
him dressed in sandwich boards in Piccadilly where we had a talk
together, and I reflected on the different costumes a man can wear
in his time.
My stay in Blenheim Palace in 1923 was quite pleasant because
86 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
of the beautiful park land, mostly wild, that surrounded the Palace.
In my careless working costume, so unlike the usual plus-fours, etc.,
of a Palace guest, I was more than once called upon by the game
keepers to explain my presence. My assertion that I was a guest at
the Palace always produced a comic series of forehead salutes and
apologies of flunkeys.
Also the Duchess of Marlborough had an organist to come and
play the organ for me. It was built by a former Duke, and the day
began with an hour of Bach. The Duke disliked Bach, After the
organ recital I began work. In the evening there was more Bach;
the Duke was bored by it and asked why we did not care for jazz
or night club music. His idea of a great man, he freely said, was
someone like Luigi, who ran a fashionable club.
One day the Duke asked me to see the Chapel of Blenheim. We
entered a building totally devoid of Christian symbolism or Chris
tian feeling. I said, "I see nothing of Christianity here." The Duke
said, "The Marlboroughs are worshiped here."
On this visit I tried to make a second study of the Duchess, but
succeeded only in making a sketch. I had earlier made a study of
the Duchess, which I still have. This bust which is somewhat
stylized, was the cause, I was told when exhibiting it, of great
uneasiness among English patronesses of artists, who expect a work
to be entirely lacking in any character and would rather have a
portrait lacking all distinction than one which possesses psycho
logical or plastic qualities. A combination of these qualities is ab
horrent to those ill-educated snobs who run about London airing
their money-bag opinions, and who dominate with their loud-
voiced arrogance the exhibiting world.
The Duchess, at whose instigation the portrait of the Duke was
undertaken, was a woman of great discrimination in art. She owned
works by Rodin and Degas, and had known both these artists;
and she thoroughly understood what an artist was aiming at.
When I was there, Blenheim Palace had been denuded of its fine
Rubens, and I thought the pictures, of which there were quantities,
were mediocre, A large and vulgar Sargent dominated one room,
THK 9TH DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH
PORTRAITS 87
and in another the place of honor was occupied by a flashy
Boldini.
The modern artist has the ambition of rivaling the great Renais
sance masters and imagines himself in the place of Titian or Man-
tegud decorating palaces, and having the opportunity to do honor
to his craft and give immortality to the great. Alas! Practical ex
perience dispels these illusions; and he finds himself out of spirits,
and out of pocket over the results, as a rule.
"OLD SMITH"
Often in Bloomsbury, where I live, I see an old, bareheaded,
bearded man with a hand organ. His savage apostles' head attracts
my attention. He turns and says, "Take another look!" I ask him
to sit for me, and he consents. He sits, a silent character, revealing
only that he had been in the Army on service in India.
He is determined to keep out of the workhouse, and is glad of
the opportunity of making a little extra. His head is bronzed with
his outdoor life, and I suspect he is a gypsy. I like his rugged, de
fiant character, and I think of doing a life-size figure of him, or of
using him for a group. I am planning a "Descent from the Cross."
I never carry out this plan, and Old Smith disappears from Blooms-
bury.
I never see him again.
"OLD PINAGER"
He is a different character. He sits with his matches every eve
ning on the doorstep of a shop labeled "Old Masters." His head is
bowed. He is the image of abject patience. He is quite pleased
to sit in the same position in my studio where it is warm.
He speaks of himself, of how he has never been able to make a
living for himself at anything. He accepts himself as a natural
failure, and is even content to be that. He lives in a "doss house."
It seems that the girls of the quarter are his best friends, and with
good-hearted generosity drop pennies or "tanners" into his box
on a cold winter's night.
88 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
"Pinager." His bust with the snarled patient hands is in the
Aberdeen Art Gallery.
He also has disappeared.
KRAMER
The Leeds painter, Kramer, was a model who seemed to be on
fire. He was extraordinarily nervous. Energy seemed to leap into his
hair as he sat, and sometimes he would be shaken by queer trem
blings like ague. I would try to calm him, so as to get on with the
work. He was the typical Bohemian, and I recall his waking me
up one morning to ask me to go to the Marlborough Street Police
Court to speak for his model, Betty May, who had thrown a glass
at my enemy in a caf6 dispute. I went, and there was the model
with all her friends in court. Betty was excited and happy at the
situation, and smiled to everyone. I said in answer to the magistrate
that Betty May was to my knowledge most gentle but tempera
mental, and must have been provoked. The magistrate repeated,
"Gentle but temperamental. Three pounds/' With that the happy
band of Bohemians went to the Caf6 Royal for drinks*
THREE PORTRAITS
I made this portrait of my wife in 1912. Leaning upon her hand,
she looks toward the future with serene confidence. In the com
position itself, I attempted movement, which, while very natural,
I abandoned in later work, and severely restricted myself to the
least possible movement. This I practiced as a kind of discipline
so that my construction would be more firm* I have always in
tended returning to the portrait of movement. It is a pity that I
have not started on this new departure ere this, but there is time
yet for new developments,
In this mask, I immediately made what I think is one of my
subtlest and most beautiful works. The serenity and inward calm
are there, and from the point of view of style, the simplicity is that
PORTRAITS 89
achieved by antique sculpture. I can recall that I worked at this
mask without eif ort, achieving it happily, and was pleased with the
result. It is worth remarking of this mask, that two versions of it
were bought by Japanese, one of them a young sculptor who, on
visiting me, immediately wished to acquire it, and took it away
with him.
(1918)
This bust, I think, is the most profound of the three works, and
it has that quiet thoughtfulness that I had unconsciously striven
for in the other two; or most likely, as I matured in my work, I
naturally brought into full play all my powers of observation and
expression, and so made this one of my bravest, and I think one of
my most beautiful, busts.
This work was unhurried and brooded over, and the drapery
was worked with great care. The lines, all running downwards like
the rills of a fountain, are essential to the effect of the bust and help
to express its innermost meaning.
I think of this bust as a crowning piece, and I place it with any
work I have done. There is a version of it in New York owned
by Stevenson Scott, the dealer in Old Masters; and when I visited
his gallery I was pleased to see it, holding its own among paintings
by Rembrandt and Hals. On the other hand, Lord Duveen saw it
at my bronze molders on his discouraging visit with me to see the
"Madonna and Child"; he looked at it indifferently, and just asked
who it was a portrait of. I suppose one ought to be indifferent to
praise or blame, and yet the artist faced with indifference is always
cut to the quick. I remember George Grey Barnard's remarking
about this indifference to works of art when I was a student, and
he ironically said that the killing of ten thousand pigs in Chicago
was what interested Americans, and not the creating of sculpture.
That was a case of pork butchers, but when it comes to experts and
dealers in works of art, critics, professors, authorities on art ...
90 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
BUST OF A LADY
The sculptor is to model a bust, and the beautiful sitter has ar
rived. To give an impression of how the sculptor works, the state
of mind, and the moods by which the successive stages are
achieved, imagine him then in a state in which critical analysis of
the form and emotional exaltation are present at the same time. To
the exclusion of all else, his vision is concentrated on the model,
and he begins. (A state of high nervous tension,) His searching,
loving eye roams over the soft contours of the face, and is caught
by the edges of the brow enclosing the eyes, and so to the cheek
bones and then downward past the mouth and nose. The mask is
lightly fixed and the salient points established. This mask is ar
rested by the twin points of the ears. Behind, the mass of hair
from above the brow and falling to the shoulders is then indicated,
by broad and sketchy additions of clay, without particular defini
tion, merely a note to be taken up later. Return to the mask. The
expression of the eyes, and the shape and droop of the upper eye
lid, the exact curve of the under4id is drawn* Here great care is
exercised, and the drawing must be of hair-breadth exactness. The
nostrils are defined, and for this a surgeon's sharp eye, and exacti
tude of observation and handling are necessary; a trembling sensi
tiveness, for the nostrils breathe; and thence to the contours of
the lips and the partition of the lips* Then the contours of the
cheeks, the faintest indication of cheekbones, and the oval of the
head, never exactly symmetrical, must be shown; and when so
much is achieved—a halt A sonnet of Shakespeare, or Faust's in
vocation to Helen comes to mind. Return to work. Inward fire
must be translated to clay. The mind and hand of the sculptor must
work together— an embracing mind, an active and translating hand,
a conjunction of the material and the spiritual From the model
who sits quietly, unconscious of the absorbed worker, the sculptor
draws out, wizardlike, the soul, and by a process almost of incanta
tion builds tap the image. Now the head is formed, and takes on
life by ever so slight gradations. The movement of the head is
PORTRAITS 91
finally resolved on, and by ceaseless turnings of the stand the planes
are modeled and related. The subtle connections between plane
and plane knit the form together. The forms catch the light; em
phasis is placed, now here, now there; the shapes are hunted, sought
after with ardor, with passion; there is no halt in the steady build
ing up and progress of the work. Strange metamorphosis, incarna
tion and consummation. Now the shoulders are formed; they are
related to the cheeks; the back is studied; the arms and hands come
into being; the hands flutter from the wrists, like flames; a trem
bling eagerness of life pulsates throughout the work. What a
quartet of harmonies is evoked in this bust! Head, shoulders, body,
and hands, like music. Turn the stand, pace round the clay, study
from a thousand angles, draw the contours, relate the planes, evoke
the immortal image-sculptor of eternal images.
CHAPTER EIGHT
My First Statue of Christ
( 1917-1920 )
DURING the war I had made a statue in bronze of Christ, and
exhibited it at the Leicester Galleries. Immediately a most
hellish row broke out. The statue was reviled, attacked by the
press, the clergy, R.A.'s, Artists' Associations and social bodies.
Father Bernard Vaughan wrote as follows:
I feel ready to cry out with indignation that in this Christian Eng
land there should be exhibited the figure of a Christ which suggested
to me some degraded Chaldean or African, which wore the appearance
of an Asiatic, American or Hun, which reminded me of some ema
ciated Hindu or badly grown Egyptian.
I was astounded at the reception of this figure, and still am.
George Bernard Shaw came out in defense of it, and it was even
tually bought by Apsley Cherry-Garrard, who was a member of
Scott's second South-Pole expedition.
I would wish a work like this of mine to be in a church or a
cathedral, but I am afraid that none of my religious works will ever
go to appropriate settings. Today ecclesiastical authorities fight
shy of any work which shows any religious intensity of feeling,
and merely wish for innocuous "furniture" that will not disturb
the mind of the beholder. For the ecclesiastical authorities espe
cially there exists by now a whole school of copyists of early re
ligious work. They love to work in a washed-out, slightly Gothic,
92
MY FIRST STATUE OF CHRIST 93
somewhat Byzantine style; and by this "copy-cat" business imagine
that they are in the great Christian tradition. They have even
banded themselves together and have workshops, showrooms, and
agents to sell their products. In fact they find religious sculpture a
fruitful field for exploitation.
They would, if they could, prevent any other artist from invad
ing what they consider their province— religious art. They are
monopolists, of course— of what they have copied.
There are in fact a number of artists ripe for fascism, who, if
they had their way, would ban and burn as readily as any Nazi.
Intolerance is as rife among the artists and writers as among busi
ness people, although those who are engaged in the intellectual pur
suits are supposed to be free of such feelings as trade jealousy,
bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.
In attempting to explain my motives and my methods of work,
and the progress of my major works such as the "Christ,"
"Genesis," "Day" and "Night," and "Consummatum Est," I find
myself at a disadvantage; although my aims and methods of work
are clear enough to myself, yet, not having had the advantage of
ever being asked to teach anybody, I lack the habit of giving verbal
expression to my efforts or aims in sculpture. There is a language
of form which is sufficient to itself, as there is the language of
music; and my inarticulateness is not due to any vagueness in my
own mind, but only to lack of experience in explaining and, as an
outgrowth of that, my tendency of mind not to care to explain
what I find so clearly expressed in the work itself.
Years ago I chose as a heading for my catalogue the sentence, "I
rest silent in my work." I thought this a superb and complete atti
tude toward those who are continuously asking the artist to explain
himself; for it has been my experience that those artists who have
taken the greatest trouble to explain themselves, who have been
the most verbose and highfalutin, have mostly been the feeble,
the pedantic, and the impotent. At school at the Beaux Arts, during
one of the "treats" by new students, I recall how a Swiss sculptor,
who was almost the worst student in the atelier, when asked to
94 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
speak began, "I will now give you a discourse on the history of
art in Europe from noo A.D. to..." at which we all howled him
down. I still have this aversion to lengthy and scholarly "dis
course."
Cezanne, whom all the scholars now worship, is a good example
of this dislike inherent in the really creative artist. Cezanne never
gave out more than simple sentences or somewhat terse aphorisms
which can be variously interpreted. I am most often bored to death
by the artist who, in front of his work when showing it, starts
groaning out his explanation of what he has attempted to achieve.
One look at the work is enough. Also I consign to the wastepaper
basket the missives, mostly of extraordinary length, sent to me to
explain to me my own works. Artists of all kinds write to me,
religious cranks, theologians, clergymen, and women eager to ex
press themselves, crazy people who write threatening letters, and
journalists. I have even been told by one enterprising American,
quite clearly in a schedule, just when he and his party traveling
through Europe would pay a visit to my studio!
My language is form, in all its variety and astonishing wealth;
and that is my native language. Sometimes the motive for begin
ning a work is obscure even to myself, or the genesis of it may be
partly accidental. This in no way diminishes the final importance
of the work. As a composer beginning with some simple theme or
melody expands and fills out a work until it becomes a symphony
or opera: so with my first "Christ," the one cast in bronze. I began
it as a study from Bernard van Dieren when he was ill I went to
his bedside to be with him and talk. Watching his head, so spiritual
and worn with suffering, I thought I would like to make a mask
of him. I hurried home and returned with clay, and made a mask
which I immediately recognized as the Christ head, with its short
beard, its pitying, accusing eyes, and the lofty and broad brow
denoting great intellectual strength.
You will say— an accident. That was no more an accident than
the event recorded in some short sketch of Turgenev, when he
relates how, standing in the crowd somewhere, he instantly felt
THE CHRIST
MY FIRST STATUE OF CHRIST 95
in some man beside him the presence of the Christ himself and the
awe that overcame him. So with the Disciples of Emmaus, as repre
sented by Rembrandt in the unforgettable Louvre picture of that
name.
The Disciples have met a stranger at an inn, who has sat down
with them and broken bread. In a flash the divine head is lit up,
and in awe and astonishment the Redeemer is revealed to them.
I saw the whole figure of my "Christ" in the mask. With haste
I began to add the torso and the arms and the hand with the accus
ing finger. This I then cast, and had as a certainty the beginning
of my statue. So far the work was a bust. I then set up this bust
with an armature for the body. I established the length of the
whole figure down to the feet. The statue rose swathed in clothes.
A pillar firmly set on the two naked feet— Christ risen supernatural,
a portent of all time. I remember that I was interrupted in this
work for a considerable period, a whole year in fact; and it stood
unfinished in the center of my studio in Guildford Street. When
I resumed work on it, it was only to finish the feet.
My original model at this time lay on a sick bed in Holland.
I had Kramer, the artist, and Cecil Grey, the musician, pose for
the unfinished parts. Throughout my conception was clear, yet the
fact that live people pose and are helpful to a sculptor in finishing
a work which has a symbolical or religious import, shocks some
people. They look upon even the remotest resemblance to someone
they know as a sort of impiety, something sacrilegious. So with the
"Christ." Before the work was cast into bronze, a woman visiting
the studio looked upon the "Christ" and, knowing that Van Dieren
was a model for the head and torso and arms and not approving
of him personally, immediately exclaimed against it, and in a hor
rified tone declared that I had committed something "evil." This
extraordinary and personal view of the statue of course did not
enter into the minds of those who later condemned the statue. I
must maintain that my statue of Christ still stands for what I in
tended it to be. It stands and accuses the world for its grossness,
inhumanity, cruelty, and beastliness— for the World War and for
96 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
the new wars in Abyssinia, China, Spain, and now our new Great
War.
How prophetic a figure! Not the early Evangelical Christ of
Byzantium and Rome, nor the condemning Apollonian Christ of
Michelangelo, nor the sweet rising and blessing Christ of Raphael,
but the modern living Christ, compassionate and accusing at the
same time. I should like to remodel this "Christ." I should like to
make it hundreds of feet high, and set it up on some high place
where all could see it, and where it would give out its warning, its
mighty symbolic warning, to all lands. The Jew— the Galilean-
condemns our wars, and warns us that "Shalom, Shalom" must be
still the watchword between man and man.
Now in 1939 I return in thought to my Christ of 1917-1920,
and recognize how well I worked; how in this work I realized the
dignity of man, his feebleness, his strength, his humility, and the
wrath and pity of the Son of Man.
The attack upon the Christ came from all quarters—editors of
newspapers, clergymen, and the man in the street.*
I remember that, visiting the gallery one day with a friend, I
noticed a man just emerging from the room where the "Christ"
was shown, with clenched fists and an angry, furious face, 1 was
told this was John Galsworthy, who ever after, in season and out,
attacked my sculpture. I believe that in England it is his class, the
upper middle class, that has most resented my work. One might
wonder at this, wonder what it is that strikes at them in my sculp
ture, what profoundly rooted beliefs and shibboleths are disturbed.
I know that my work has become the sport of popular music-hall
quips and "man in the street" jocularities, but this is due to a
humorous association of sculpture with comic figures like the little
mannequins that ventriloquists use; but the class that Galsworthy
represents really "sees red" when confronted with my imaginative
works and even my portraits. A man entering my exhibition of
drawings says to the gallery owner, "I should like to take Epstein
*See Appendix IV, "The First Statue of Christ," for letters and articles by
Father Bernard Vanghan, Bernard Shaw, John Middleton Mturry, and others.
MY FIRST STATUE OF CHRIST 97
out to a butcher's shop and have his hands chopped off." Matthew
Smith overheard a man saying to a woman in front of a Bond Street
dealer's window which showed a flower painting of his, "Those
fellows, Epstein and Smith, ought to be in jail!" This fury over
flower paintings, or paintings of still life, fruit or landscape, or por
trait busts, passes one's comprehension, and can only be understood
by relating it to something fundamental, going far deeper than the
sculpture or painting involved.
"THE VISITATION"
In 1926 in Epping Forest I modeled a life-sized figure which I
intended for a group to be called "The Visitation." I can recall
with pleasure how this figure looked in my little hut which I used
as a studio. I should have liked it to stand among trees on a knoll
overlooking Monk Wood. This figure stands with folded hands,
and expresses a humility so profound as to shame the beholder who
comes to my sculpture expecting rhetoric or splendor of gesture.
This work alone refutes all the charges of blatancy and self-
advertisement leveled at me. It now occupies a niche at the Tate
Gallery in such a position that it is easily missed on entering the
Gallery. I am pleased it is an obscure niche, and the statue is only
discovered on leaving the Gallery. The jaded visitor may "turn
perhaps with relief" (a phrase often used by the critics to my
detriment) to this bronze, which could also be called "Charity."
When I exhibited the work at the Leicester Galleries, wishing to
avoid controversy, I called it "A Study." By this disguise I suc
ceeded for once in evading the critics always ready to bay and
snap at a work. A subscription was raised to purchase it, and I re
call that Richard Wyndham gave the proceeds of an exhibition he
was holding of his own work toward its purchase for the Tate
Gallery. George Grey Barnard, who was passing through London
at the time, came with me to the Gallery and was enthusiastic, and
this from my old master moved me greatly. He declared that if I
sent it to New York he would see that it went to the Metropolitan.
98 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
On this visit I noticed a little man in the Gallery who seemed very
upset at the figure, fretting and fuming. I asked who he was, and
was told he was a well-known collector of the most modern art.
What opposite emotions were aroused by my modest and unassum
ing work!
CHAPTER NINE
On the Edge of London's Bohemia
CABARET DECORATIONS
JUST before the war, Madame Frida Strindberg turned up in Lon
don. She had been, I believe, the last of August Strindberg's
wives, a little Jewish woman from Vienna. She intended starting a
night club, the first of its kind in London. To pave the way for this
venture Madame Strindberg gave a dinner, to which she invited
artists and those she thought would be interested in her scheme.
The meal was sumptuous, the champagne lavish. When the man
agement presented the bill Madame Strindberg took it in her hand,
and turning to the company said, "Who will be my knight to
night?" There was no response from the company!
The Club was situated in a basement of Regent Street, and
Madame Strindberg asked me to decorate it for her. Two massive
iron pillars supported the ceiling, and I proposed surrounding these
with sculpture. I proceeded directly in plaster and made a very
elaborate decoration which I painted in brilliant colors. Gaudier-
Brzeska came down to see these decorations while I was at work
on them. This cabaret was intended to capture the youthful and
the elderly rich; and several of my models, among them Lillian
Shelley and Dolores, sang and danced there.
I went there once or twice, but this sort of night life was dis
tasteful to me. I heard later that the place had been raided by the
police, and my decorations and Madame Strindberg disappeared.
Of Lillian Shelley I made two studies, an early head and later an
elaborate bust, now belonging to Six William Burrell. Of the head
99
ioo LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
I remember that when I was exhibiting it, the model turned up
while I was in the Gallery, leaning on the arm of a gentleman who
turned to me and said self-righteously, uYes, I can see that you
have depicted the vicious side of Lillian." I answered that he "knew
her perhaps better than I did." ... In truth I had made a head ex
pressive of innocence and sweetness. A short time later the gentle
man who had so offensively rebuked me was kicked to death in
Cornwall by the miner father of a girl he had attempted to seduce.
For the morals and manners of my professional models I have
never been responsible, and it is strange that an artist should have
the odium of the somewhat erratic conduct of his models placed
to his account. The charming and often facile moeurs of the model,
if known, sometimes give the artist a lurid reputation.
I would prefer to work from models who are not known, but
often a pestiferous journalist will nose around and get on familiar
terms with the models. He mentions them in the press. That very
soon turns their heads, and they become characters with "a public."
They imagine themselves to be like actresses. Their opinions are
quoted, and they make fools of themselves generally. That particu
lar period in London has now passed with the passing of the old
Caf6 Royal. Lillian Shelley, the temperamental, was of course
beautiful, and likewise Dolores was beautiful; but their devotion
to art ceased when they left the model's stand. Betty May also
shared in their beauty and notoriety, and I did two studies of her.
The notion that I worked only from models of this kind was
severely commented on in the newspapers, and one of my exhibi
tions was characterized, I recall, as nothing more than an exhibition
of semi-Oriental sluts. How pharisaic! Perhaps as I exhibited these
bronzes with the Christ, these Magdalenes were in the right com
pany. I have of course worked from every kind of man and
woman, and it is amazing that today an artist can be criticized for
following in the footsteps of Donatello and Rembrandt.
It was at this period that I met Frank Harris, who asked me to
do his bust and work from him at a villa in the South of France;
but he was a character so filled with bombast and conceit that
THE EDGE OF LONDON'S BOHEMIA 101
I was careful about having anything to do with him, more espe
cially as he was extremely large in his requirements of work, but
when I mentioned money to him he became the vaguest of the
vague. I believe he later persuaded Gaudier to do his bust; and
Gaudier, more trusting than I, or hard up at the time for funds,
went some way with it, and then destroyed it. "Killed Frank
Harris," as he said.
Accusations of wickedness in my work cannot affect my own
judgment of it, which is that it is sound and healthy, more espe
cially as there is now an art which professes with pride its own
viciousness.
Perhaps those artists are not so "devilish" as they believe them
selves to be.
Had I an income I would like to live in the country and work,
but I have found it impossible to work in the country and keep
in touch with galleries and others who might want my work. My
three years, 1913-1916, at Pett Level near Hastings were produc
tive of many carvings, but I had continually to run up to London
to see if I could dispose of something or get a portrait to do.
My staying for so long a period in London I put down to a
natural disinclination for moving about. Barnard said to me, "You
can work anywhere in the world, I see," for he could not under
stand why I stopped in England when America held out so many
more opportunities for me as a sculptor. In truth I cannot think of
my work as peculiarly of London or of my time. It had never, of
course, troubled me whether I was of my time or not. Some critics
and artists harp on this, and discuss whether an artist represents his
period or whether he has influenced his times. Such questions can
be argued either way without arriving at anything of value. This
hair-splitting does not appeal to me. It is like the question whether
an artist ought to be or is classic or romantic, realistic, academic,
abstract, or revolutionary. All are terms which can be construed
differently and argued endlessly.
One of the sticks which was used to hit me during the war was
the saying that my work smacked more of Diirer than of Leonardo
102 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
—that I was really a boche. But I took it as a compliment that I
ever so remotely resembled Diirer. They thought also when they
said my work was more like Easter Island work that they had
accused me of barbarities unspeakable, the critics not realizing that
the carvings of Easter Island are sculptural and sensitive— far more
so than our wretched imitations of Belgian Renaissance and French
nineteenth-century decadence which disfigure London's squares.
This was a period when a strange character called Stuart Gray
roamed about among the artists. He had been a respectable lawyer
in Edinburgh, but had "kicked over the traces," and led a con
tingent of "hunger marchers" to London. He finally got hold of
some sort of derelict house where the lease had not expired. It was
facing Regent's Park. He turned it into a caravanserai for artists
and models.
This refuge was without gas or electric light, so that candles
were used, and it seldom had water. No room had a lock, as most
of the metal work had been carried away. Here the artists lived,
and there was a life class at which I sometimes drew. Sometimes
the artists, among others Roberts and Bomberg, a mysterious Indian
artist, and some models would have parties. Whether Stuart Gray
ever received any rent was a question; but the old man, who re
sembled a Tolstoy gone wrong, would prowl about at night in a
godf atherly fashion and look over his young charges.
The mysterious Indian died, it is said of eating a herring which
he had kept too long in a drawer. Another lodger, a woman who
had advanced views on the relations of the sexes, and had written
a play called "The Triumph of Venus," in which her ideas were
incorporated, went on to the balcony in her dressing gown and
started declaiming her play to passers-by, until the police inter
vened.
This fantastic place did not last long, and Stuart, under the
guidance of Bomberg, became a painter, gathering his materials
where he could and painting on old bits of rag. But he had no
talent and finally went off to become "king" of some Utopian
colony on an island where he reared another family.
THE EDGE OF LONDON'S BOHEMIA 103
At this time I became acquainted with Philip Heseltine (Peter
Warlock in music), and also got to know Cecil Gray, and I took
them both to St. John's Wood one day to introduce them to Bernard
van Dieren, the Dutch composer. This introduction was to have
an important influence on the lives of both Gray and Heseltine.
Heseltine later committed suicide. He was a restless and discon
tented character, but he certainly was devotedly attached to Van
Dieren, and took his mental color largely from him. He left a
quantity of music which reflects Elizabethan work, at that period
very much in vogue. His mentality was, I thought, warped by a
very crude and childish streak, and practical jokes of a stupid sort
satisfied him. Cecil Gray's book is unfortunately a one-sided and
idealistic picture of him.
Through Gray and Heseltine, I met Frederick Delius, and we
visited each other. This composer of sweet and melancholy music
was argumentative, cranky, and bad-tempered, and we had many
a set-to. Delius having very little sense of humor, the argument on
his part became almost always acrid. For one thing, he imagined
himself a tremendous authority on art. This was founded on the
fact that in Paris years ago he had bought a picture of Gauguin's.
Also Mrs. Delius was a painter. Delius would lay down the law on
art, and absurd laws they were too. He was interesting only when
he spoke of his early days in Florida as an orange grower and
crocodile hunter, or related anecdotes about Negroes, or Paris life.
My picture of him is borne out by Richard Fenby's account of his
four years' martyrdom at the house of Delius.
I should have liked to do a bust of Delius, for I think that all
the drawings made of him are unbelievably sentimental, especially
those made during his last illness. The artists imagined that a sick
man must be a saint, and they drew him with a saintlike martyr's
expression on his face.
I proposed the idea to Gray, but nothing came of it. It was the
same with Busoni, whom I met with Van Dieren; but at the time
Busoni told Van Dieren he could not stay long enough in London
to sit for me. In reality he did not think me good enough to work
ro4 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
from him, and Van Dieren confessed later this was the true reason.
With Busoni also I found that, when it came to the plastic arts, he
was both arrogant and dogmatic, referring with disdain to Van
Gogh and El Greco, and speaking of Greek works as "wedding-
cake sculpture." He was an admirer of the Italian futurists! Busoni
was surrounded by an adoring crowd of worshipers who thought
that every word falling from his lips was gospel, and this undoubt
edly gave him a wrong perspective on things. He had a fine head,
leonine and ravaged by illness; and I do not think that any artist
did him justice. He looked best at the piano when he scowled at
what was not always a friendly audience, for as a pianist his bril
liant distortions of Beethoven and Bach caused murderous feelings
in some, and Busoni seemed well aware of this. I thought him far
more Teuton than Italian, and no doubt his upbringing in Ger
many molded his mind and music.
CHAPTER TEN
The Hudson Memorial:
the ccRima" Row
( 1925 )
THE Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, which included
artists and writers, asked me to do a memorial to W. EL
Hudson, author of Green Mansions, The Purple Land That Eng
land Lost, and books on birds and the wild life of South America
and England.
I was asked to do a panel in an enclosure which was to be called
the Bird Sanctuary. I made two sketches showing Hudson himself,
and was informed that the Office of Works would not accept a
representation of a person, that is, anything in the way of a por
trait, in Hyde Park, and that I would have to make a design of
a more symbolic nature.
In the meantime I was invited to attend a meeting of the Royal
Society and hear their views on this matter. The meeting was a
large one, and in the course of discussion John Galsworthy rose,
and declared that in his opinion I was not the right man to do the
monument. He spoke, I thought, with some bitterness, and I was
told later that he had proposed another sculptor whom he knew
personally, for the work. I agreed at this meeting to make a model
which would incorporate the idea of Rima, the heroine of Green
Mansions, and my particular supporters on this occasion were Sir
Muirhead Bone, Cunninghame-Graham, and Holbrook Jackson.
105
106 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
I made a sketch, which was passed by the Office of Works, and I
started at once in Epping Forest in a shed, on the direct carving of
the panel from a block of Portland stone. This took me seven
months, in the winter of 1924-25, working solitary, surrounded by
silent and often fog-laden forest. In the spring, on a fine May
morning, the memorial was unveiled in Hyde Park.
The ceremony, which was attended by a large crowd, was pre
ceded by speeches from Mr. Stanley Baldwin, the Prime Minister,
and from Mr. Cunninghame-Graham, and music was played and
sung. Then the Premier pulled the cord of the covering sheet. This
small and inoffensive panel produced a sensation wholly unexpected
on my part.
Cunninghame-Graham would relate with some humor how he
saw a shiver run down the spine of Mr. Stanley Baldwin. Imme
diately afterwards a hullabaloo unequaled for venom and spite
broke out in the press. The monument was "obscene" and should
be removed immediately. "Take this horror out of the Park!"
shrieked the Daily Mail. A letter to the Morning Post advocating
its removal was signed by the president of the Royal Academy,
Sir Frank Dicksee. A shabby gentleman turned up who held out
door meetings in front of the memorial, and attracted a large
crowd by denouncing it- I was astonished to hear him harangue
his audience thus: "Would you," he said, pointing an accusing
finger at the panel, "want your sister depicted in this manner?"
The Cockney crowd can get interested in anything in the way
of entertainment. They are so good-hearted and good-humored,
and when this gentleman announced that he would recite from
sunrise to sunset his hymn of hate, and the papers had given
him the publicity he sought, he was given victuals and drink as
well. Finally the police removed him.
For a whole summer troops of Londoners and provincials wore
the grass down into hard, beaten earth in front of the monument,
seeking the obscenities that did not exist. A campaign of vilifica
tion was never more uncalled for. There was nothing in the
memorial to shock anyone from the point of view of morals or
o
o
C/3
Q
ffi
H
THE HUDSON MEMORIAL 107
art, and on my part no row was anticipated. I had my defenders,
and a memorandum was sent to the Office of Works by Sir Muir-
head Bone and others, and questions were answered in Parliament.
A demand was made in Parliament that "the terrible female with
paralysis of the hands called 'Rima' be instantly removed from the
Park." Another M. P. characterized the panel as "this bad dream
of the Bolshevist in art." Bernard Shaw defended it, and remarked
on the meanness that could only afford a panel the size of a postage
stamp, and wittily congratulated me on making this postage stamp
size bulk so large that it caused high explosives of rage and hate in
controversy.
Cunninghame-Graham defended the work with his usual bril
liance and courage. Again and again he returned to the fight.
Shaw was right about the size. When considering the monument
with the Office of Works, three screens of different dimensions
were put to judge its size, and, without consulting me, the smallest
of the screens was chosen.
Finally the protests died down. The muckrakers grew tired of
their fruitless journeys to the Park, and the panel was left in its
peaceful setting. The deserted spot could now be visited without
alarm or interference. Grass grew again on the downtrodden soil.
Months after, the more scurrilous newspapers, failing in their
first attempt to remove the statue, continued nevertheless tactics of
incitement. The Morning Post of October 7, 1925, said: "Mr.
Epstein's work in Kensington Gardens is so far from being the
object of admiration that, were not the English a tolerant people,
it would have long ago been broken into pieces." On November
14, the Morning Post had the satisfaction^ of reporting: "The in
evitable has happened to Mr. Epstein's TRima.' She has been in-
gloriously daubed with green paint." Again on November 18, the
same paper announced triumphantly: "It is clear that there is some
quality in the monument in Hyde Park that revolts the public."
A letter demanding the removal of the memorial with as little
delay as possible now appeared in the Morning Post, signed by a
number of noted persons, including Lady Frances Balfour, Hilaire
io8 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
Belloc, E. F. Benson, the Hon. Stephen Coleridge, the Hon. John
Collier, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir Frank Dicksee, President of
the Royal Academy; Sir Philip Burne-Jones, Sir Edwin Ray
Lankester, Sir David Murray, R.A., Alfred J. Munnings, R.A., Sir
Bernard Partridge, Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson, Her Highness
the Ranee Margaret of Sarawak, and H. Avray Tipping.
This manifesto declared that Epstein's design is "by universal
consent so inappropriate and even repellent that the most fitting
course open to the authorities would be to have it removed bodily.
It would be a reproach to all concerned if future generations were
allowed to imagine that this piece of artistic anarchy in any way re
flected the true spirit of the age."
The satisfaction of the Adorning Post was almost complete.
With this encouragement it resumed its campaign to remove the
memorial. Letters poured in which tended to show how this small
carving upset the moral and aesthetic susceptibilities of London.
Remember that the memorial is in an obscure corner of Hyde
Park where only a chance visitor seeking quiet and solitude might
occasionally venture.
Yet the campaign went so far that a question was even asked in
Parliament—Sir William Davison asked the Under-Secretary for
Home Aff airs what was the use of having a Fine Arts Commission
if "Rima" were allowed to remain.
But the carving weathered this attack also, I discovered later
that what had really saved the memorial was a memorandum sent
to Viscount Peel, His Majesty's First Commissioner of Works, by
Sir Muirhead Bone. This document I now publish with the consent
of Sir Muirhead.*
On the last two occasions when the monument was defiled, the
letters I.F.L. (Independent Fascist League), and swastikas were
painted on. Following this, an Inspector from the Park Police
visited me. He asked me who I thought were the perpetrators of
*Sce Appendix V, "The Muirhead Bone 'Memorandum* on the Hudson
Memorial," for this document, also for D. S. McColTs and Sir Mutrht**
letters to the Times.
THE HUDSON MEMORIAL 109
the defilement. When I suggested they might, because of the
swastika signs, be of fascist origin, he solemnly said: "We Police
make no difference between Fascists and Communists." And with
that oracular remark he departed.
LIVERPOOL EXHIBITION
AND
ALLEGED FORGERIES
In answer to an invitation from the Walker Gallery Committee,
I sent to the Liverpool Exhibition of 1926, in the Walker Gallery,
a bust of Mrs. Epstein and a bust called "Anita." At the official
opening, Lord Wavertree, who held an important position in the
Gallery, made some severe strictures in his speech, which were
widely reported in the provincial and London papers. He said,
"If these are Mr. Epstein's best, then a poor artist would have done
better if he had submitted his worst." Naturally, as I had been in
vited to send my works, I now wished to withdraw them. The
Committee apologized for the rudeness of Lord Wavertree and
asked me to allow the works to remain. Lord Wavertree, true to
his class and position, remained unrepentant and reveled in the
notoriety his words had given him. Of course he spoke for a large
section of the ignorant, and to them to insult an artist was just
being honest and straightforward. In fact, in an advertisement he
had inserted in the Times, the noble lord thanked the large number
of persons who had written and congratulated him.
An interesting sidelight on the foregoing is that an artist can
be libeled with impunity. The artist is supposed to enjoy and profit
by libelous notices in the newspapers. Certainly in my case this is
a fallacy. In America there exists the expression, "Every kick is a
boost." Architects and public bodies, however, will not give com
missions to a man when the bullying newspapers have convinced
them that he is unsafe or dangerous. The bullying of the news
papers has an adverse effect on the sales of an artist, and certainly
on any commissions that he may get.
no LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
Archbishop Downey, of Liverpool, said in an interview when
the new Roman Catholic Cathedral was started, "It would be a
calamity if anything Epsteinish were found in the new Cathedral."
I replied, "Where else could be found a sculptor to do justice to
the spirit of Christianity today, in a world almost wholly bereft of
Christian action?"
This brings me to another problem which artists have to face,
namely, forgeries. When I returned from America I found that a
number of works not made by me had been sold under my name.
I traced the forgeries to a certain company of dealers in works of
art, and brought an action against them in the courts. This case
was tried before Justice Maugham (now Lord Maugham), and
was decided against me. I quote from the Daily Telegraph of
October 17, 1930, an account of the case. It will be of interest to
artists in a like predicament. It is as follows:
Mr. Jacob Epstein, the noted sculptor, was the unsuccessful plaintiff
in an action brought before Mr. Justice Maugham in the Chancery
Division to-day.
He claimed an injunction restraining the International Depositories
Ltd., proprietors of the King's Galleries, King's Road, Chelsea, their
servants, and agents, from selling, offering for sale, or describing any
pieces of sculpture as his work, when in fact it was not his work at all
The defendants denied ever having passed off, or attempted to pass
off, any work of Mr. Epstein which was not his,
Mr. E. J. Herckscher, counsel, stated that in July, 1929, Mr. Epstein,
his client, was informed by Lady Jones of Hyde Park Gate, wife of
Sir Roderick Jones, that she had purchased at King's Galleries a bust
carved by him, of his wife. At her invitation he went to see it, and
declared it to be not sculpture but a cement cast, and not his work.
Subsequently two other ladies went to the Galleries and saw four
or five other pieces of sculpture or casts, which they were led to
believe were the work of Mr. Epstein, but actually were not his work
at all. Thereupon in July, Mr. Epstein started an action, and the
defendants gave an understanding in the terms of a notice of motion
not to sell any casts as his work which were not his work* Since then
further negotiations led to nothing. Mr. Epstein did not ask for
THE HUDSON MEMORIAL m
damages, but was anxious to stop what he thought was a very im
proper use of his name.
Giving evidence, Lady Jones said that when she visited King's Gal
leries, she noticed five pieces of sculpture on a shelf, and was told by
Madame Fredericke, a director of the defendant company, that they
were "Epstein's." On a second visit a week or a fortnight later, Madame
Fredericke told her "she believed" they were Epstein's, and that she
had bought them as such, but that she could not warrant them as
Epstein's. She stated her belief that two of the pieces were "Lust" and
"Vice," and that because of their extreme character, she had difficulty
in selling them. The price of the lot was thirty pounds. Witness paid
seven pounds fifteen shillings for the piece in question, believing it to
be a work by Mr. Epstein.
Mrs. Ethel Kibblewhite, another witness, said that in June last she
went to the Gallery at the request of Mr. Epstein, who was her friend,
and on questioning Madame Fredericke about a head or mask was told
that it was a "Portrait of Epstein by himself."
Mr. Cleveland Stevens, K.C. (for the defendants), "Madame Fred
ericke said that she never saw you before in her life. Did you see
anybody else there?"— "No."
Another witness, Miss Jessie Briggs, also a friend of Mr. Epstein,
said she saw a mask at the Gallery labeled "Epstein himself."
Mr. Epstein gave evidence himself describing his inspection of the
bust at Lady Jones' house and his denial on that occasion that it was
his work. He had never seen it before.
Mr. Herckscher: "Was it a copy or imitation of any work of
yours?"
"I should say that it was a faint imitation of a certain work of mine."
"Did it bear any resemblance to your wife?"— "None whatever."
Witness said that his object in bringing this action was to guard
himself and other artists from a very dangerous form of trafficking in
names, reputations, and false works.
Mr. Epstein stated that if the bust purchased by Lady Jones had
been genuine, it might have fetched between 200 pounds and 300
pounds.
Mr. Stevens: "Do you say that your reputation has suffered with
Lady Jones?"— "Certainly. She would have many persons of social
ri2 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
distinction at her house, and if they saw a work of this kind, it would
be bound to damage my reputation."
Madame Fredericke, giving evidence, said that she had bought seven
pieces of sculpture, picture frames, canvas and pottery from a Chelesa
artist who was in financial difficulties, paying him 25 pounds or 30
pounds for the lot. She thought the pieces of sculpture were inter
esting and odd shapes.
"The public," she added, "like these things to-day, they make good
garden ornaments." When she asked the artist from whom she had
purchased them where they came from he said they "might be Ep
stein's." One was called "Grief," another called "A Pugilist," looked
like a boxer's fist, and a third was something like a snail.
She gave two of the pieces to her sister. When Lady Jones visited
the gallery, witness told her that she had never verified the authen
ticity of the pieces of work, and could not give a guarantee.
Giving judgment for the defendants with costs, Mr. Justice
Maugham said that Mr. Epstein's motive in bringing the action was
reasonable and proper, but it was a great pity that he had not taken
more seriously a letter of the defendants from which it was plain
that they had no desire to insist on any such statement as that they
believed this bust to be his work.
On the evidence of Lady Jones alone, he was unable to find that die
bust was said to be Epstein's. The true construction seemed to be that
Lady Jones was left under the impression that it "might be" Epstein,
and that it was a speculative purchase, without any positive guarantee.
He did not think the words "Epstein-himself ' would, standing
alone, lead any person to believe that the bust was a portrait of the
sculptor executed by himself. His Lordship was not satisfied to leave
the case without saying that Madame Fredericke's observation with
reference to the piece of sculpture in question was unwise and in
some respects observations of which the Court did not approve.
The foregoing account does not give a picture of the grotesque
situation in which I found myself at the trial The Justice, who
adopted a snubbing tone toward my lawyer throughout the pro
ceedings, was evidently impressed by the pathos of Madame Fred
ericke, who, dressed in a crinoline, and with curls at the side of her
THE HUDSON MEMORIAL 113
head, complained bitterly of having her time wasted by this action.
As she claimed also to be deaf, she was given special facilities by the
court, standing down amidst Council, rather in a martyr's attitude.
From the way things went at this trial it looked as if I were the
criminal, one who by his villainous accusations made other people
suffer. I was strongly reminded of the famous account by Dickens
of the trial in Pickwick Papers, except that I felt myself to be the
"hass."
Note that this traffic in "good garden ornaments" went on while
I was safely away in America.
My witnesses failed me. Lady Jones and Mrs. Kibblewhite gave
hesitating answers to questions and were positive about nothing,
whereas the Company's witnesses gave assured statements. A court
has a peculiar overawing effect on people who are not accus
tomed to the atmosphere. After the trial these two ladies apolo
gized to me, and could not understand why they had given such
vague and unsatisfactory answers to questions. No account was
taken of the fact that the Company, by ringing me up on the
phone, could have found out in half an hour whether they were
dealing in Epsteins or not. I was nonplussed by the verdict, which
was a complete triumph for the King's Road Company. Apart
from this case I have been asked on other occasions to verify
bronzes not by me; and once even my name had been engraved on
the base of the bronze.
Frequently newspapers have published articles advising archi
tects not to employ me. This you would think is a direct libel, and
I would have a perfectly legitimate case to bring to court. I have
refrained from bringing libel actions, knowing only too well that
as the popular idea, high and low, in England, is that if anything
is really new and intense in art, it should be shot at first sight, and I
would not be given even the legendary farthing that Whistler re
ceived in his action against Ruskin. In any case, litigation is a costly
business, as I found out in my action against the Company that sold
the alleged Epsteins. Also, how can an artist have his time taken
up with the details of court claims and the intricacies of the law?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
New York Revisited
(1927)
I HAD worked for a year on the "Madonna and Child," An
Indian woman, Sunita, and her son Enver posed for me. The
model was of that eternal Oriental type which seemed to me
just right for a work of this religious character. When I had fin
ished the head, the model remarked that she could not possibly
"look as good as I had made her." She recognized that there was
something eternal and divine in it and outside herself. Her boy,
aged six, was another matter* He was restless, and for a boy to sit
or rather stand quiedy while I was working was out of the ques
tion. To interest or distract him I had him read to while I worked,
but none of the stories interested him for long, and, sensing that
he was master of the situation, he kept constantly asking for new
stories. My impatience at the time is responsible for the child's
body being somewhat unfinished, but all in all it was a work I
carried through with great concentration and continuity of
thought, and its complex linear plan and very elaborate secondary
motives were dominated by my original idea of presenting a mas
sive group that would go into a cathedral or religious sanctuary.
In connection with the "Madonna and Child" it is interesting to
record that M. and Mme. Maisky, the Soviet Ambassador and his
wife, when visiting me were especially struck by this group. Mme.
Maisky thought the Soviet would be interested in it, although the
tide did not accord with the Soviet "ideology," but it was a
114
MADONNA AND CHILD
NEW YORK REVISITED 115
Mother and Child and might be accepted as a group of Mother
hood. I gave Mme. Maisky photographs of the group, but there
was no result, and later the New York sculptor, Sally Ryan, bought
the group and lent it to the Tate Gallery, and it is now at the
New York World's Fair in the British Pavilion.
While the bronze was still at the foundry, Lord Duveen asked
me if he could see it, and we motored to the workshop in Fulham.
Looking at the work, he turned to me and said, "If you had in
mind to do a Madonna and Child, why did you not choose a beau
tiful model?" I was so astonished at this reception of the work that
I turned away from him in disgust. This notion as to what con
stituted beauty was typical of him. On one occasion I heard him
say that had he not thought in his youth that Rembrandt's people
were ugly, he would have made many more millions of money in
his lifetime. Knowing that I was leaving for America, the great
man got in one more shot. It was a piece of advice. "So you are
going to America," he said. "Do not let it be thought that you are
leaving England because of dissatisfaction with the manner in
which you are received here."
James Bone of the Manchester Guardian, in commenting on my
departure for America, said, "England has been a bad stepmother
to him." It was generally thought that I was shaking off the dust of
England from my feet. That was not my intention. English artists
often visited America. Some made a habit of going yearly, I had
been away from America for twenty-five years, so there was noth
ing unusual in my holding an exhibition of my work there. Never
theless every move I made was looked upon as significant, and so
Duveen warned me to mind my step.
Before I arrived in New York harbor, a journalist who was on
board asked me for an interview for a Jewish paper. His first ques
tion was, "What is your attitude toward Zionism?" At that time,
1927, Zionism was not the acute question it became later, and I had
not thought about it. I answered that I had no attitude. He then
said with a belligerent air, "We will want to know your attitude,
make no mistake about it." At that I left him.
n6 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
At Sandy Hook the American journalists had gathered in a
cabin to receive and question me. They were courteous and their
questions amused me. One said, "Have you come to debunk sculp
ture?" This "debunk" was explained to me, and I had to answer
in the negative. I had no such evangelistic mission. Instead I had
to assert that I had come simply as a working sculptor to show
some of my pieces. I got on very well with the newspaper men,
but a leader in one of the papers cautioned me that the warmth of
my reception depended upon my attitude to American art. This
touchiness I am afraid is characteristic of American feeling toward
artists who arrive from England. Why should they bother about
what European artists think of them? The European artist usually
goes to America to sell his wares and has no business criticizing
and fault-finding. The American artist resents an attitude of pa
tronage or superiority assumed by the visitor.
I was returning to the country of my birth, and a peculiar feeling
that I had deserted America to live and work in Europe was in the
air. This feeling was somehow hostile and expressed itself in the
New Yorker, which carried a weekly notice while I was exhibiting
that "Epstein has come home to roost." I had not realized that I wa3
as important as all that. I knew nothing of what had happened in
America during my twenty-five years' absence. For my old master,
George Grey Barnard, I had the greatest respect, and I was pre
pared to see what there was that was new* I knew that American
artists made frequent trips to Paris, and absorbed the very latest
"ism" long before the English artists did, though they were so
much nearer. I felt that those who would interest me most would
more likely be the artists who showed little or no Paris influence.
I revisited the haunts of my youth, the dockland along the lower
East and West sides of New York. I found it greatly changed. Gone
were the wooden piers that had at one time jutted out into the
river, the ancient warehouses with their strange spicy smells, the
ship chandler shops with their heaps of cordage and tackle. From
the wooden piers I used to be able to study every type of ocean
going vessel, even great three-masters with their long bowsprits
NEW YORK REVISITED 117
sticking out over the cobbled docks. The Bowery was also sadly
changed. These were prohibition days, and the saloons and the life,
and the old Bowery were gone. Of the artists, I met Bill Zorach
and Tom Benton, both of whom I liked immensely. Also I met a
set more immediately influenced by Paris, who were extremely
cliquy. They imagined that they lived in a superior world of their
own, and in that they were very like what is called "The Blooms-
bury Highbrows" in London. This New York clique also had the
same conviction as their prototypes in London, that everything in
art which was not connected with their generation and them
selves was antique and old-fashioned. Later on, when I exhibited
some of my sculpture at the Art Students' League, my old school,
I overheard one student say to another, "The Epsteins are dull.
They bore me." And I was astonished to see that all the work of
the students was abstract or cubist.
Surrealism had not come in then. Most likely the students are
all Surrealists now. When asked my opinion of the art students'
work at the Art Students' League I congratulated them on work
ing "like niggers." New York monuments were appalling to me,
rivaling those of London in their commonplaceness.
I can recall that, while I was looking at the monument of "Civic
Virtue" near the City Hall, one of the few beggars I saw in New
York accosted me. This was in pre-slump days. He asked me what I
thought of the group, and we talked about it. I felt I was back in
old New York again. My companion was a real "bum," genial and
in amazing rags. He and I talked of the New York of twenty-five
years ago which we knew.
MY EXHIBITION IN NEW YORK (1927)
My exhibition was held in a gallery which, when I first viewed
it, made my heart sink. In New York galleries have no top day
light, as in London, and this particular gallery presented a tawdry
conventional appearance, curtained walls, plants and chandeliers.
The owner of the gallery also did not recommend himself par
ticularly to me. I found that I was looked upon as just another
n8 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
fortnight's exhibition, in the yearly round of exhibitions, and my
tremendous struggle and expense in coming to New York was a
matter of just casual interest to him. Moreover, the gallery was
occupied at the time by some unfortunate Spanish artist, who, like
myself, had trusted his all to this exhibition of his, and it was a
failure; no sales, only bills for everything. Meeting this wretch and
listening to his tale of woe was not encouraging. The gallery, I
discovered, was a partnership of three men, one of whom had been
a sculptor, and my experience with the three of them was far from
pleasant. When I suggested that the walls should be simplified as
a setting for sculpture, they were resentful, and in fact bridled at
any suggestions I made for showing the sculpture to advantage.
Also my discovery that the show was for only a fortnight aston
ished me. How could one do anything in a fortnight? Sometimes
in a big city it took a fortnight for a show to get going, and in
London I was used to at least a month. I had been to terrific ex
pense to get about fifty bronzes to New York, and the large
bronze of the "Madonna and Child" was among them. A poor
gallery, and dealers who showed no interest in my work— that first
night in New York I felt thoroughly downhearted, I wished I had
never come to waste my time and earnings in a venture that prom
ised so badly. The head of the firm in arranging my show said that
a preface to the catalogue was absolutely necessary. For this pur
pose he wrote one himself, which was a strange jargon about my
aims and achievements. I had, of course, to reject this out of hand,
which made him feel none too friendly to me, as he rather fancied
himself in the role of creative art critic. The other two members
of the firm were odd in their own ways. One, the ex-sculptor, was
full of ideas by which the gallery could add up expenses to charge
me with, and I had my work cut out to evade these. I discovered,
moreover, that it was expected that my show after its fortnight run
in New York should go on a tour of the States. The prospect of
my collection of sculptures going on a tour through literally hun
dreds of cities and towns did not appeal to me. An American girl
had told me of how her work had gone on tour years before, and
NEW YORK REVISITED 119
was still "touring/' where she did not know. So I put my foot
down on the tour, and to get the gallery to agree to this in writing
was "some job," as Americans say. A lawyer and the three partners
took a whole morning and well into the afternoon to fix this up;
but finally all was settled, and the sculpture on a Saturday night
was placed round the gallery. The chief partner and his assistants,
two huge Negroes, would lift my bronzes and place them. "An
other beauty!" the chief would say, and with guffaws the burly
giants .would grab a bronze and place it where I indicated. My
dealer had been imbibing dry ginger ale, and in this sympathetic
atmosphere I began the show. I made the mistake of not going to
my private view or, as Americans call it, "preview." Americans
want to see you. I thought the works were enough.
The exhibition received a great deal of publicity, although I
had rejected the special publicity agent the gallery placed at my
disposal and at my expense. This particular lady had suggested as
a start that I should strongly criticize everything in America and so
attract attention to my show! I declined her well-meant advice,
and relied on the interest of the works themselves. In this poor
setting and with nothing to help them, the show was nevertheless
a success, and works were bought, two for public galleries. I made
friends with men like Professor John Dewey, Paul Robeson, and
Carl Van Vechten. The staff of the New Republic asked me to
lunch, and I found an appreciative and intelligent interest in sculp
ture. I had a hostile reception from what was known as the Mrs.
Harry Payne Whitney crowd. They ran a journal for themselves
which gave me a notice when the show was practically over.
I also found, of course, a certain amount of hostility in the smart
press.
A great friend was Frank Crowninshield, who edited Vanity
Fair, and who took me about to various gatherings. These were
meant well, but had the drawback of all those functions. You
were expected to get up and give a talk to your audience, and in
my case I was generally taken by surprise and had nothing to say;
also I intensely dislike being singled out, and so these gatherings
iio LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
were an embarrassment to me. I find it difficult to understand why
I should make speeches, although I know that the technique of
saying little or nothing is easily learned. I much preferred Rita
Romilly's, where artists and writers gathered, and Paul Robeson
sang, and there was no formality of dress or speech. It was here I
met a strange character called Bob Chanler, who wished to make
me his guest of honor at a luncheon, but I heard that his luncheons
were famous for the strength and variety of the drinks, and that
Bob himself was invariably seated at the head of the table on a sort
of throne, placed well above his guests. This piece of news settled
it, and I left the "democratic" Bob severely alone. New York pre
sented some aspects of the "artistic" life which I think are peculiar
to itself. One which is a little disconcerting is that most of those
who took an interest in my work invariably were at great pains to
advise me what to work on next, and tell me of their ideas in
detail. One such pest would descend on me with irrefutable reasons
why I should make "St. Paul" my next great work.
There was a great deal to enjoy, I found. For one thing, my
flat overlooked Central Park, and in the view across it in the wintry
landscape there was all the beauty of a Hiroshige. At night under
neath my windows I could watch the myriad skaters glancing to
and fro over the frozen ponds, with piercing shouts and gaiety.
I enjoyed also eating in restaurants there. Southern food was served
by beautiful mulatto girls*
At the Metropolitan there were wonderful Rembrandts, and
also a fine collection of C&zannes; and as well of an afternoon an
orchestra played symphonic music there. This is only now being
copied in London in our galleries. New York, musically, I should
say, had almost too full a fare. The number of artists giving con
certs was beyond the ability of any one person to listen to. Thea
ters were crowded, and Broadway of a night was a curious sight,
with its bright lights and thousands of sightseers thronging the
streets. As a city, New York at night is a fascinating study, with,
I should say, its sinister side in the crowded quarters. But perhaps
that is common to all large cities. The lighting up of the city to-
NEW YORK REVISITED 121
ward evening viewed from my flat, was lovely, and as a spectacle,
I suppose it is unique. I preferred watching the great skyscrapers
from the outside to traveling inside them. Their elevators and
countless numbered offices I could never quite master. Actually, in
the four months I was in New York I went out very little, and as
I had three portraits to do, I was rarely out except at night. I went
with Paul Robeson and a party to Harlem, and made the round of
Negro dance places; but I saw nothing to wonder at beyond the
usual stamina of the Negro when dancing.
We had to carry our drink with us, of course, and the unusual
spectacle of ladies carrying bottles under their arms amused me.
Through Professor Dewey, I met Doctor Albert Barnes, of
Philadelphia, whose wonderful collection of French paintings I
went to see. Dr. Barnes has a reputation for boorishness, of which
I found no trace on my visit. He was courtesy itself, and showed
me over his collection with evident pleasure, and went so far as
to dismiss his teachers and pupils from the galleries so that I could
see the collection in peace. I was told that dictaphones were in
stalled in the walls, so that critics who were facetious or too frank
could be instantly reported and told to go. One young English
man claimed that he was the victim of this detective arrangement.
I believe Dr. Barnes had reason to resent the manner in which
his collection of Cezannes and Renoirs were first received by the
worthy citizens of Philadelphia, but that is in the long past, and
by now Philadelphia is proud to have expensive Cezannes in its
midst. Of sculptures in the Barnes collection, I saw none except
some African carvings which had come from Paul Guillaume, who
had helped Dr. Barnes with his collection of French paintings.
One Sunday morning I was taken to see a collection of Old
Masters. This wonderful assembly of paintings, comprised of
Titians, Rubenses, and Rembrandts, all fine examples, was owned
by a man who had become blind. The old man, taking me by the
arm, led me from one to the other of the paintings, talking about
them as if he could still see their beauty, as indeed in his mind's eye
he did, until we came to the few pieces of sculpture and my host
122 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
started telling me of a Benvenuto Cellini which should have been
on a pedestal, and which I failed to see. Looking about me I espied
the Cellini on a table where it had been misplaced. The collection
interested me, of course, and I much enjoyed seeing these wonder
ful paintings. At the end, though, the collector said, as if con
gratulating himself, "You see, my taste stopped with 1669, the
year of Rembrandt's death." I recall that when leaving him I
reflected bitterly on the taste and judgment of this wealthy man
who would not purchase a work unless it was three or four hun
dred years old. Conservatism I found as strongly entrenched in
America as it is in England, or in official circles in France.
There is practically the exact equivalent of the Royal Academy
in their National Academy of Design, and even in "advanced"
groups who take their thinking from Paris or Munich. I saw
nothing of a sculpture that would be the equivalent of the "Leaves
of Grass," even in intention. There was a curious harking back to
pseudo-classic sculpture, a kind of early Greek stylism; an early
Greek made into table ornaments or book-props, or Renaissance
motives turned into garden statues or fountains; or Buddhist placid-
ness on a small decorative scale, a sort of Sunday-afternoon Budd
hism I thought, something that was the equivalent in sculpture of
Christian Science. I found nothing in sculpture that was native,
inspired by the soil, or even, by the vast commercial enterprises of
America. At present, perhaps, the great works like the Boulder
Dam or the Panama Canal, or the skyscrapers come nearest to an
impression of the American soul Sculpture has to wait.
During my stay I did three portraits, Professor John Dewey,
Professor Franz Boas, and Paul Robeson. The John Dewey por
trait was a presentation to the Columbia University, where it now
is. The subscriptions were donated by students and admirers of
Dewey who each gave five dollars. As a sitter, Dewey was very
sympathetic, and Joseph Ratner, a student of his whose idea it was
to present the portrait, would come in and talk with him. They
kept up a running philosophic conversation, and Ratner contrived
at the same time to make coffee for the three of us. I enjoyed
Q
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5
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NEW YORK REVISITED 123
making this bust and I recall the event with pleasure. Dewey's
son-in-law said, on seeing the bust, that I had made him look like
a "Vermont horse-dealer." This was not a bad characterization,
as Professor Dewey came from Vermont; and he pleased me with
his Yankee drawl and seeming casualness. He was a man abso
lutely straightforward, simple, and lovable in character. Professor
Dewey said of his bust that it pleased him and he "hoped he looked
like it."
Professor Boas was also interesting to work from, His face was
scarred and criss-crossed with mementoes of many duels of his
student days in Heidelberg, but what was still left whole in his
face was as spirited as a fighting cock. He seemed to be a man of
great courage, both mental and physical.
Paul Robeson sang lullabies to Peggy-Jean. I would have liked
to have worked longer from him, but I had already booked my
passage back, and so the study I did of Robeson remains a sketch.
(Lately in London I did a study of his son, Pauli, aged eleven. He
is as strong as a bull. After the sittings young Pauli would start
wrestling, and as this took place to the great danger of the clay
model, I always edged him out of the studio and locked the door,
letting him finish the wrestling outside.)
My stay in New York from October i, 1927, to January, 1928,
was too short to leave me with any settled convictions as to the
trend of American art and architecture. The amazing skyscrapers
looked wonderful, but I recall that an architect showed me his
design for a state building which was absolutely Assyrian, and
when I suggested this to him he responded by saying that he
thought American civilization was Assyrian.
One of the most amusing episodes in New York was connected
with the court trial over the bronze "Bird" by Brancusi. The
American authorities had imposed an import duty on the work,
judging it as a manufactured implement. The trial took place
before three judges, lawyers, and a gathering of witnesses including
myself, Frank Crowninshield, Forbes Watson, William McBride,
and Steichen, the photographer who owned the work. The court-
i24 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
room was high up in a skyscraper overlooking the bay, and behind
the judges was draped a huge American flag. On a table in front,
Brancusi's "Bird" in polished brass rose like a spear. The govern
ment lawyer was evidently at his wit's end to make out a case.
Puzzled at the whole proceeding, his method was to bully the
witnesses for "The Bird." A statement from a prominent American
National Academician, a sculptor, was read, in which he roundly
stated that in his opinion this was no work of art or sculpture.
I give here a report of the proceedings from the New York Evening
Post on the following day (October 21, 1927).
EPSTEIN, IN COURT, HELPS BRANCUSI.
FAMOUS SCULPTOR AND CRITIC TELL U. S. TRIBUNAL "THE BIRD"
WORTHY, RECOGNIZED ART.
The moot question of whether Constantin Brancusi, creator of forms
of abstract beauty in marble, bronze and wood, is a sculptor or a
mechanic, came before the United States Customs Court today, when
an appeal from the Government's classification of his bronze "The
Bird" as not a work of art but a manufacture of metal and as such
taxed 40 per cent of its commercial value, was argued for the artist.
Jacob Epstein, famous American sculptor and one of the most em
battled of die modernists; Edward Steichen, artist and owner of
Exhibit One, "The Bird"; William Henry Fox, director of the Brook
lyn Museum of Art; Henry McBride, Forbes Watson and Frank
Crowninshield, art critics, all testified that the Rumanian artist is a
recognized sculptor and that "The Bird" is a work of art of no utili
tarian value.
Presiding Justice Byron S. Waite and Justice George M. Young
sat in judgment in the court room on the ninth floor of the Customs
Building, at Washington and Christopher Street, and First Assistant
Attorney General Marcus Higginbotham, in charge of customs, was
the skeptical Government counsel who wanted to know whether
Exhibit One was any more artistic than a "polished brass rail har
moniously twisted" and, after all, whether "The Bird" could not just
as well be a fish or a tiger.
The disputed Exhibit One rested the while on a table before the
NEW YORK REVISITED 125
Court, seemingly poised for flight straight upward into space, its
polished, curved surface gleaming warmly in the scant sunlight from
the windows. Brancusi, its creator, is in Paris, and it stood alone.
Bird, fish or tiger? Justice Wake early in the hearing expressed the
opinion that what it was called did not matter, so long as competent
authorities said it was a work of art.
Yet the earnest justice could not refrain from asking, with a slight
show of incredulity, the various witnesses, as they all said it suggested
a bird or had to them the quality of a bird, whether they would
"recognize it as a bird if they saw it in a forest and would take a
shot at it?"
A number of Brancusi's works, including "The Bird," which he
brought to New York for an exhibition last December, were held up
by the Customs appraisers, as originally revealed in the Evening Post.
As works of art, they would not have been subject to duty, but they
were held for 40 per cent customs.
"The Bird," which had been purchased in Paris by Mr. Steichen,
was invoiced at $600 and was taxed $240, which Brancusi paid under
protest. No decision was reached today, and the Government will
wait to present its case until a deposition can be obtained from Bran
cusi that the disputed piece was his own work.
All the witnesses carefully explained that in their opinion the name
of Exhibit One did not matter to them, that they felt it was a work
of art because it satisfied their sense of beauty by reason of its form
and balance. Mr. Higginbotham kept demanding scornfully whether
any good mechanic could not do as well with a brass pipe.
Epstein, who has just returned from many troubled years in England
to hold an exhibition of his own works, triumphantly produced a piece
of stone which he assured the Court was an Egyptian sculpture dating
back to 3000 B.C. and represented a hawk. He offered it as proof that
Brancusi was not strictly modernistic and individual but derived from
ancient art.
The sculptor, harmoniously dressed in a suit of warm brown and
a lavender shirt, smiled helpfully and expansively as he tried hard
to make the Justices and a Government counsel understand that a
mechanic can't make a work of art, because as soon as he does so he
becomes an artist.
126 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
"A VERY GREAT ARTIST"
Questioned first by Brancusi's counsel, who were Charles J. Lane
of this city and Maurice J. Speiser of Philadelphia, Epstein said he was
a sculptor and had studied and worked at his art for thirty years in
New York, London and Paris, and was represented in the Metropolitan
Museum here and in English and other foreign galleries.
In his opinion Brancusi was "decidedly" a sculptor, and declared
that he was regarded as a very great artist by other artists. Asked to
give his opinion of Exhibit One, he said:
"In my opinion, it is a work of art."
Then the Assistant Attorney General wanted to know where Ep
stein had studied and what diplomas he held. Epstein said he had
studied here and in various Paris schools including the Ecole des Beaux
Arts, but was puzzled about the diplomas.
"I don't believe that diplomas are ever given by art schools," he said,
hesitantly.
"Whether you know it or not, did you ever receive one?" demanded
the literal Mr. Higginbotham.
"I know of no such thing," said the artist.
MR. HIGGINBOTHAM'S BREAK
"What is your line of sculpture?" pursued Mr. Higginbotham.
The question evoked a snigger from the artists and critics in the
back of the room. When the Government counsel elucidated by
asking him if he did "human figures and that sort of thing," Epstein
replied:
"I do everything."
"Have you done anything like Exhibit One?"
"But all sculptors are different. I might not want to."
Justice Waite thought this was quibbling and demanded an answer
which was in the negative.
"Why is this a work of art?" the lawyer continued.
"It pleases my sense of beauty. I find it a beautful object."
"So if we had a brass rail, highly polished and harmoniously curved,
it would also be a work of art?"
"It could become so," said Epstein.
NEW YORK REVISITED 127
"Then a mechanic could have done this thing?" asked the lawyer
triumphantly.
"No; a mechanic could not make a work of art. He could have
polished this, but he could not have conceived it."
This answer was greeted by exclamations of approval from the back
seats.
"This is a bird to you?"
"It is a matter of indifference to me what it represents, but if the
artist calls it a bird so would I. In this there are certain elements of a
bird. The profile suggests perhaps the breast of a bird."
"It might also suggest the keel of a boat or the crescent of a new
moon?" asked Justice Waite.
"Or a fish or a tiger?" chorused the lawyer.
When the lawyer asked him if Brancusi were not an isolated phe
nomenon, Epstein asked permission to produce the Egyptian hawk to
show a similar lack of realistic detail.
After two more years of litigation, a verdict in favor of "The
Bird" was obtained.
I returned to London, found a studio in Kensington, and im
mediately set to work on a "Pieta" for which I had the materials
ready. I would have continued with this but for the commission
to work on the groups for the Underground Building in West
minster.
I had had my exhibition of sculpture, I had made three portraits,
and I had met friends and enemies. It was a diversion— an interesting
demarche.
CHAPTER TWELVE,
"Day" and "Night. " "Genesis. "
Old Testament Drawings.
( 1929-1933 )
"DAY" AND "NIGHT"
i HARLES HOLDEN, for whom I had worked on the British
\j( Medical Association's Buildings, asked me to do the two
groups above the doors of the Underground Headquarters Build
ing, and I proposed groups of "Day" and "Night" as appropriate
to a building that housed offices for transport and for speed.
Other sculptors (five of them) were to work on figures up
above, representing the Winds. When I went down with the
architect for the first time to examine the site, I was introduced
to the clerk of the works as "the sculptor," which I did not mind;
but outside his hut, Mr. Holden explained that it would not do for
me to be known as yet, at any rate not until I had actually set
to work. "Dark forces might upset things." I had to be smuggled
in.
It was in this atmosphere of mystery that I began six months'
work which took me through the entire bitter winter months of
1928—1929, working out of doors, in a draught of wind that whis
tled on one side down the narrow canyon of the street. I invariably
began work with a terrible stomachache, brought on by the cold.
After I got over this I was all right, and remained on the building
128
H
S3
O
"DAY" AND "NIGHT" 129
until nightfall, having my lunch there outdoors so as not to lose
time.
The carvings were direct in stone, and the building was being
put up at the same time. I had to be oblivious to the fact that for
some time tons of stone were being hauled up above my head, on
a chain, and if this chain broke . . .
The sculptors working on the building were insured, but for
less than the navvies who did the hauling and carrying work. I
suppose a sculptor's life was not considered worth very much, and
injury to him was not looked upon as anything serious. Of course
my work astonished the men on the building, and many a facetious
remark was passed, in between flirtations with the office girls in
the street. I had a shed built around the work, as it got altogether
too public for my liking, but I arrived one morning to find my
shed broken open. Such was the curiosity that sculpture aroused in
London. Peeping journalists bribed the watchman to let them in
to have a look at me at work, through the slits in the boards; and
my actions were described in the press the following day!
At last, when the two groups were finished, Sir Muirhead Bone,
who throughout had taken a great interest in these sculptures,
invited the critics to come and see the result. They mounted the
ladders onto the scaffolding, shook hands with me, and congratu
lated me on my achievement. The next day they let themselves go
in the press, and left me with no delusions as to what they really
thought. The outcry over the "Night" and "Day" resulted in a
committee of the Transport Company sitting in judgment on the
groups, and it was only the intervention of Sir Muirhead Bone
that prevented the "Day" from being cut off the building. "Day"
represented a father and son, and what there was that was obscene
in it beats me. Even the Manchester Guardian, usually very sensible
and even-tempered in matters of art, saw fit to bowdlerize the
photograph they reproduced. A party of hooligans in a car at
tempted, by throwing glass containers with liquid tar in them, to
disfigure the group of "Night." At present the groups are left in
peace, to gather upon themselves the eternal grime of London.
130 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
In connection with the "Day" and "Night," I recall that I was
asked by the Manchester Guardian to give them a sketch of what
my intentions were when carving these two groups. I wrote or
dictated an account which failed to satisfy those persons who want
you to reveal to them your innermost soul, and I remember how
disappointed they were that my "aims" did not seem more ideal
istic. Immediately, of course, their estimate of the sculpture itself
fell. Thus achievement is confused with literary exposition, and
the inability of the artist to explain himself. The fame and popu
larity of a painter like George Frederick Watts is undoubtedly
due to his marvelous faculty of putting himself across with high
philosophic purpose, as in his utterance when asked what his aim
was: "The utmost for the highest," and other like phrases. The
low estimate to which his paintings have fallen, naturally follows
the oblivion into which his transcendental aims have sunk. "Good
wine needs no bush." Today there is such a plethora of "bush"
that an art resting on its own merits is practically unknown. Of
one famous French painter it is known that he subsidizes journals
expressly published to advertise his own works, although this is
cleverly concealed by admitting a few other artists, or preferably
articles on ancient works or archaeology.
The discussion that followed the exposing of the groups was as
usual carried on with vehemence. Sir Reginald Blomfield took up
the cudgels against what he called "the cult of ugliness" and sent a
letter to the Manchester Guardian*
"GENESIS"
I conceived the "Genesis" after I had made the study for
"Visitation," and it is another facet of the same idea. I felt the
necessity for giving expression to the profoundly elemental in
motherhood, the deep down instinctive female, without the trap
pings and charm of what is known as feminine; my feminine
would be the eternal primeval female, the mother of the race. The
* See Appendix VI, "The Batde for 'Day* and 'Night,'" for letters and articles,
"GENESIS" 131
figure from the base upward, beginning just under the knees,
seems to rise from the earth itself. From that the broad thighs and
buttocks rise, base solid and permanent for her who is to be the
bearer of man. She feels within herself the child moving, her hand
instinctively and soothingly placed where it can feel this enclosed
new life so closely bound with herself. The expression of the head
is one of calm mindless wonder. This boulder, massive yet delicate,
with transparent shadows of the-light marble, goes deep, deep down
in human half-animal consciousness. The forms are realistic, the
treatment grave. There is a luminous aura about it as if it partook
of light and air. Complete in herself, now that there is that con
summated within her, for which she was created, she is serene and
majestic, an elemental force of nature. How a figure like this con
trasts with our coquetries and fanciful erotic nudes of modern
sculpture! At one blow, whole generations of sculptors and sculp
ture are shattered and sent flying into the limbo of triviality, and
my "Genesis," with her fruitful womb, confronts our enfeebled
generation. Within her man takes on new hope for the future. The
generous earth gives herself up to us, meets our masculine needs,
and says, "Rejoice, I am Fruitfulness, I am Plenitude."
I worked on this figure with no hesitations, and with no pre
liminary studies, and knew very clearly what I wished to achieve.
I attacked the stone with my aim very clearly defined in my mind,
and with a sympathetic material. I was not long in evolving the
idea. This figure, when shown, aroused a storm of protest, which
was as unexpected as it was tempestuously angry. Our emasculated
period was shocked by a figure without "sex appeal," without inde
cencies, and without charm. It was not the eternal feminine of
eroticism, and perhaps for that reason aroused the ire of women.
As women complained, I had insulted their sex. There is some
thing in this complaint. Missing in this statue all the usual appeal
ing, so-called "feminine" graces, they would see in it an attempt
to undermine their attractiveness, their desire to please and seduce.
This is where the insult to "womanhood" came in. They were
more alarmed at the symbolic truth of this statue than at the many
132 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
cruel caricatures perpetrated by a Daumier, a Toulouse-Lautrec,
or a Grosz; whereas my work is a hymn of praise and rejoicing.
The misunderstanding of my motives and the perverse construction
placed upon my aims always astonishes me. This statue, when of
fered on loan to the Tate Gallery, was refused on the grounds
that it had caused a "sensation," and therefore was unsuitable for
the solemn halls of the Gallery.
The "Genesis" was carved in a block of Seravezza marble which
I bought in Paris. The block was commenced in my shed in Epping
Forest, and was still unfinished when I had to live again in London.
I took the uncompleted work to my Hyde Park Gate studio, where
I finished it. I had a foretaste of what was to come when one day,
lifting my head from the work, I saw looking at me through the
window of an adjoining property, two gardeners with their mouths
agape, eyes staring1, rooted to the spot in astonishment. When I
moved they fled.
It is imagined that I do my work in a storm of controversy, some
what like the atmosphere of a boxing ring, with adherents and
enemies shouting encouragement and abuse to each other. The
reality is that for long periods, thank God, I work quietly and
give no heed to anything else. I do not know or care who is Prime
Minister, or what the London weather is like. The periods of
exhibition are for the most part a nuisance to me. I have one day,
or even, I might say, one brief hour, of pleasure, when I have my
work assembled for the fgrst time in the gallery. With the press
day and the private-view day, and then the subsequent visit of the
public, all pleasure goes, and only chagrin and irritation follow.
The exhibition becomes my nightmare, and I long for the day it
will close down and I can return to work in peace.*
PAINTINGS OF EPPING FOREST AND OLD
TESTAMENT DRAWINGS (1933)
During the summer of 1933, I painted nearly a hundred water
colors of Epping Forest, where I rented a cottage. I would go out
* See Appendix VII, ** 'Genesis' and the Journalists," for letters and articles.
GENESIS
OLD TESTAMENT DRAWINGS 133
with my daughter, and we did not have to walk far before seeing
something worth painting. As usual with me, what I started as a
mere diversion became in the end a passion, and I could think of
nothing else but painting. I arose to paint, and painted until sun
down, and when later I exhibited these paintings in a London gal
lery, it was a source of annoyance to some critics that I had painted
so many. This to the critic is really a sign of bad taste. Why not
paint only two or three paintings a year? Why are you so prolific?
You increase and multiply. What commercialism! To the sterile
and unproductive person, a hundred paintings all done in a couple
of months is disgusting, a kind of littering.
Nevertheless I was very pleased with the result, and the paintings
looked well. Later I was to repeat this frenzy of paintings, only
with flowers. I had been asked to paint some blooms by a firm of
Dutch dealers in Old Masters. I said I would paint twenty, and in
the end I painted sixty. Not content with this, I went on painting,
giving up sculpture for the time being, and painted three hundred
more. I lived and painted flowers. My rooms were piled with
flowers, and this was a wonderful and colorful period. I had these
flower paintings mounted and framed by a firm of dealers, who
let it be known that I had painted flowers; and so, when my ex
hibition of flowers was ready, at least five other flower exhibitions
started at the same time. London became a veritable flower garden.
I was, of course, told that the shoemaker should stick to his last.
A sculptor is supposed to be a dull dog anyway, so why should he
not break out in color sometimes? And in my case Fd as soon be
hanged for a sheep as a lamb. Blake says: "The gateway of excess
leads to the palace of wisdom."
In 1931, I made a series of drawings for the Old Testament. I
became absorbed in the text and in the countless images evoked
by my readings; a whole new world passed in vision before me.
I lost no time in putting this upon paper. When I exhibited them
it seemed that I had again committed some kind of blasphemy, and
countless jibes were forthcoming. There is an element in all coun
tries which would suppress the free artist, kill original thoughts,
i34 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
and bind the minds of men in chains. In England, happily this
retrograde element does not make much headway. Our Nazis and
Fascists are still in the minority. Daumier was imprisoned for his
political cartoons, Courbet fined heavily for his partisanship in the
Commune; and in Germany and Austria, all artists and writers who
are suspect are banned and exiled. Today no artist must imagine
that he is back in the happy-go-lucky days when he was looked
upon as a rather irresponsible fellow, and allowed to go his way.
Oh, no! The artist today is part of the culture— Kultur it is rather,
part of the consciousness of the nation, with a responsible mission
toward the race. Whatever he paints or sculptures cannot be sep
arated from the body politic. He is to be called to account. A
bureau, a commissar, or a gauleiter must look after his activities, and
after a day's work he had best review what he has done, and see
that it is in line (Gleichschaltung), with the right political and
social ideology.
I am afraid this will become worse in the future.
Postscript. Since writing the above my fears for the future are
well borne out by the item from a Spanish paper, ARC, Novem
ber 22, 1939, with an article praising the Franco system of compell
ing political prisoners to work for the state as part of the national
industry— in reality a system of organized slavery.
This is the sentence which has impressed me. "A great number of
shops have been established in the jails and as a model can be
pointed out that of Alcala de Henares, with carpentry and printing
shops, and the sculpturing of religious images which are really
beautiful."
Sculpture in the future will be made under the supervision of
guards with rifles and machine guns.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
"Behold the Man."
"Consummatum Est."
(1935-1937)
"BEHOLD THE MAN" (1935)
T the stoneyard I see a tremendous block of marble about to
.L be sliced up and used for interior decoration. When I see
these great monoliths lying ready for the butcher's hands, as it
were, I have instantly sentimental feelings of pity that the fate of a
noble block of stone should be so ignominious. Knowing that this
stone could contain a wonderful statue moves me to purchase it
and rescue it, even though at the moment I have no definite idea
for it. Never mind— that will come. Merely looking at the block
and studying it will give me many ideas.
When I carved this Subiaco block of marble, I found it the
toughest, most difficult piece of stone I had ever tackled. All the
tools I had broke on it, and it was only after trying out endless
"points," as they are called, with different tool makers that I
finally hit upon a point that resisted, and I began to make an
impression on the stone. I wished to make an Ecce Homo, a
symbol of man, bound, crowned with thorns, and facing, with a
relentless and over-mastering gaze of pity and prescience, our
unhappy world. "Because of the hardness of the material I treated
the work in a large way, with a juxtaposition, of flat planes, and
135
136 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
always with a view to retaining the impression of the original
block. Matthew Smith, on seeing the statue in my studio, said,
"You have made a heavy stone seem heavier"— a profound com
ment. The plastic aim was always of paramount importance and
the "preaching" side secondary— or rather, the idea, the subject,
was so clear and simple to me that, once having decided on it, I
gave myself up wholly to a realization of lines and planes, what
our critics are fond of calling "the formal relations." I have not
attempted to describe this statue, as I think it describes itself. I
will let the beholder do that. I look at the work and feel that it
confronts time and eternity.
I exhibited this statue before it was quite finished. I had worked
at it at different periods whenever I could, and I still have it in my
studio and return to it from time to time. It is the largest statue I
have made, and was one of the most vehemently attacked. With
the ordinary journals the Catholic Times opened the attack as
follows:
Mr. Epstein has chosen the opening of Lent, when Christians com
memorate the death and sufferings of our Saviour, to make known to
the world his conception of Christ. We have looked, painful as the
experience was, but we have not seen the man, or even a man. We see
only a distorted reminiscence of a man; the debased, sensuous, flat fea
tures of an Asiatic monstrosity. We protest against the insult offered to
Christ by this work of an artist who has genius and skill, but who has
not considered that experiments are made only on vile bodies.*
It must be remembered that a statue like "Behold the Man" is
not shown in a public gallery, nor set out in the street, but ex
hibited in a private gallery into which no one is compelled to go
and be either "affronted" or "insulted," and where the gallery
moreover makes a charge for admission. I have carefully refrained
from advocating religious or idealistic propaganda of any sort,
and have always put out my sculpture as sculpture. I am not con
nected with a school or movement or cult, and the charge of self-
* See Appendix VHI, "Behold the Man," fox other articles*
BEHOLD THE MAN
"BEHOLD THE MAN" 137
advertisement is clearly ridiculous, as I am one of hundreds, nay
thousands, of artists who exhibit every year. The charges of
blasphemy make one think of the days of witchcraft and the auto-
da-fe. Actually my religious statues have had strong support from
the clergy. I make no complaint about the attacks on the statues,
and wish here only to record favorable with unfavorable views.
I do not see myself as a martyr, but what has always astonished
me was the bitterness of the attacks on my statues. Their cause I
am unable to fathom. In some cases, like those of art critics, I can
very well understand the motives, the long-cherished hatred of a
powerful rival to artists of their own set, the desire to monopolize
and cut out one who threatens their supremacy by merely existing,
working, and exhibiting. It is the almost insane hatred of the
average man and woman that is baffling. The coupling of the
phrase "art rebel" with Bolshevism is in itself formidable and not
lightly to be dismissed.
"CONSUMMATUM EST" (1937)
The unworked alabaster block lies in my studio for a year.
While I work at other things I look at it from time to time. The
block lies prone in its length, and I consider whether I should
raise it, but decide to leave it where it is. I can conceive any num
ber of works in it. I can conceive a single figure or a group of
figures. I have been listening to Bach's B minor Mass. In the section
"Crucifixus" I have a feeling of tremendous quiet, of awe. The
music comes from a great distance, and in this mood I conceive my
"Consummatum Est." I see the figure complete as a whole. I see
immediately the upturned hands, with the wounds in the feet,
stark, crude, with the stigmata. I even imagine the setting for the
finished figure, a dim crypt with a subdued light on the semi-
transparent alabaster. I now begin on the stone and draw out
where the head will come, the lengthened arms, and the draperies
and feet jutting further out. I start carving tentatively, carefully
on the head, having chosen the lighter-colored part of the block
for this. I work downwards until roughly the whole figure is
138 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
shaped. I concentrate on the hands and give them definite form
and expression.
In carving I rarely have recourse to a model, and depend for the
form on my experience and knowledge. I block out the containing
masses, leaving the details until later; I always try to get the whole
feeling and expression of the work, with regard to the material I
am working in. This is important. There are sculptors who treat a
figure in stone in exactly the same manner as they treat a work in
clay. With an isolated piece of stone they should regard the sculp
ture as primarily a block, and do no violence to it as stone. There
must be no exact imitation of nature to make one believe that one
is seeing a translation of nature into another material Imitation is
no aim of sculpture proper, and a true piece of sculpture will
always be the material worked into a shape. This shape is the im
portant thing, not whether the eye is fooled by representation as at
Madame Tussaud's waxworks.
As I work upon this figure in alabaster I ask myself continually
whether I am getting the feeling, the emotion from the work I
intended. I do not ask this question consciously. It is subconscious.
Many imagine that the artist, having his working hours like any
other craftsman, thinks only when in front of his work, about its
practical problems of shaping and chiseling, but this is not so.
The work a sculptor is engaged on is continually in his mind. He
sees it with his mind's eye, and quite clearly, so that at any moment
of the day or night, or even in lying down to sleep, the vision of
the work in progress is there for analysis, as an inescapable pres
ence. I would say that on a work like this, one lives in it until it
is finally finished, and one has gone on to some other work which
usurps its place in one's thoughts. It is a question as to whether
one is more thrilled at beginning a work than at finishing it. I think
beginning is the more exciting. The finished work—well, there it is.
All one's ardors and hesitations are over; the problem is solved.
The sculptor with his vision, planning, working, laying loving
hands upon the willing and love-returning stone— the creation of a
work, the form embodying the idea, strange copulation of spirit
"CONSUMMATUM EST" 139
and matter, the intellect dominating hammer and chisel— the con
ception that at last becomes a piece of sculpture. This seems to me
fit work for a man. Consummatum Est— It is finished. Instead of
writing about it, and people standing about talking, arguing, dis
puting over the prone Son of Man, with protesting palms up
turned, there should be music, the solemn Mass of Bach.
Where should this work go? Is it hopeless to imagine it could
ever be placed in a cathedral or basilica? At the best will it go into
one of those conglomerations called art galleries, to be idly viewed
by tourists? Most likely for a decade or two the work will remain
in my studio, to be forgotten by all save myself. It came from me
and returns to me in a world where it is not wanted. I imagine a
waste world; argosies from the air have bombed the humans out of
existence and perished themselves, so that no human thing is left
alive. The feet are weary from having trod the earth in vain, the
hands with their wounds turned to the sky, the face calm with all
the suffering drained away. Like the enigmatic stones of a far
island that face the sea, my stone will face the sky and give no
answer.
NOTE ON THE EXHIBITION
I exhibited the "Consummatum Est" at the Leicester Galleries.
When the statue was in place I studied the effect of the work in
its new setting. After all, a work such as this is done in the studio
with perhaps a totally different lighting, and every sculptor knows
how peculiar his work can look under other conditions. I was
pleased with the work and the solitude of the gallery, and I felt
the satisfaction that all artists, I suppose, feel for a few fleeting
moments. Surrounding the large work were bronzes, which were,
I thought, among my best. There was the "Pola," the "Nerenska,"
the "Kathleen," the "Young Communist," the "Berenice," and the
"Morna"; all works I thought living and solid, and well able to
stand the malicious scrutiny of my critics.
Years before, when preparing an exhibition, I always imagined
it as a feast that I had spread out for enjoyment; with the years and
140 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
experience I have come to have a different feeling from this gen
erous one, for one's attitude is apt to get warped and somewhat
waspish, and self -protective. An exhibition is another exposure of
oneself to the slings and arrows; and mixed with the pleasure of
seeing two or three years' work assembled together, is the feeling
that on the morrow, the critics— the enemy— will invade your sanc
tuary with their cynicism, their jealousy, their rancor, and their
impotence.
Opinion about the "Consummatum Est" was strongly divided*
As usual there were bitter attacks from the clergy, and more par
ticularly from Roman Catholic journalists. As everyone had an
opinion, the newspapers gave expression to all, in one case sending
out their sports editor to write upon it. In reviewing the printed
criticism I am hard put to it to find serious attacks; there is much
that is virulent and embittered, and much that is downright silly.
The defense is in all cases far more considered and far better writ
ten; and actually, were a plebiscite to be taken of these con
troversies, I am not sure but that the consensus would be for the
statues rather than against. Appreciation is not always vocal,
whereas the incensed visitor to the gallery is shocked into imme
diately writing to the Times or the Daily Mirror; and an M.P.
must hold up the business of the nation while he asks questions to
relieve his outraged artistic feelings.
As usual the row starts with some nonentity who fancies himself
as an art critic. In this case a Sir Charles Allom, described as an
architect, but better known as a contractor, was given a great deal
of publicity by exclaiming:
aA disgusting travesty. An outrage on Christian ideals.
"How could it be possible for Christ to be the clumsy, heavy,
bloated figure which Epstein has depicted?
"Look at those dreadful feet. They are not the feet of the active
man Christ must have been. He lived the simplest life: He must
have been a man of remarkable physical and nervous energy,
seldom resting, everlastingly doing.
"Epstein's presentation of Him is physically quite incon-
CONSUMMATUM EST
"CONSUMMATUM EST" 141
sistent with what we know of Christ* Artistically it is false too.
"Christ, you know, spent His life curing cripples. If He had
seen Himself as Epstein has seen Him, He would have realized
that there was not one piece of Himself that was not crippled.
"One cannot conceive of such a Spirit inhabiting the gross,
ugly, bloated form which Epstein has given Him." *
On the last day of the showing I went into the gallery after I
had thought everyone had left, and the exhibition was supposed
to be closed down. I entered the gallery to look upon my work in
solitude and silence, and I then noticed a man in a corner who came
forward and spoke to me of the sculpture as if he sensed me to be
the sculptor. He spoke well and eloquently. He was a foreigner,
and when I questioned him, he told me he was a German, a Jew,
an engineer. What impressed me was his evident desire to remain
anonymous. A Jew out of Germany. A man of culture and of
understanding, who did not wish me to make anything of him
personally! We parted, and that is my last impression at the end
of the exhibition of "Consummatum Est."
* See Appendix IX, "Consummatum Est,'* for other articles and criticisms.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
"Les Fleurs du Mai"
( 1938 )
I MUST say at once that my drawings for Baudelaire I consider
at the same time among my best work and my greatest failure
when exhibited, from the point of view of any intelligent appre
ciation. I had made the drawings for an edition of Les Fleurs du
Md to be published in America by the Limited Editions Club. I
believe only six or seven drawings were wanted, but when I
started reading the text with a view to illustrating it, I found the
subject so absorbing I made sixty drawings. I believe Mr. Macy,
who originally asked me to make the drawings, was somewhat
taken aback at this over-measure, and I realized that I had taken
the commission all too seriously. The drawings now are scattered;
some have been bought, others sent to America, and I regret they
have not been kept as a collection or published entire.
I cannot imagine why these drawings so brooded on and worked
over were received, not I will say with contempt, for that was
also their portion, but with an indifference and a coldness I do
not understand. They were, in the ugly parlance of today, "a
flop." To my astonishment a poet, who, I had imagined, was prac
tically unknown in England and whom I had scarcely ever heard
mentioned, was according to the critics almost a household word.
Strange discovery, indeed. The connoisseurs without exception
found that I had no "understanding of the poet," and that the
drawings were "no more illustrations of Les Fleurs du Mai than
142
"LES FLEURS DU MAL" 143
they were of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress" It seemed to me that
my blasphemy was considered as great, in this case, as in that of
the Old Testament drawings. This reverence for Baudelaire was
really most touching, and to the lover of the French Dante a
source of great gratification.
The drawings of the same format, when hung in the gallery,
seemed to me like a decoration which could be carried out on a
large scale with magnificent effect. In these drawings I had tried
to represent the spiritual, religious, and ecstatic sense of the poems
with their tragic and somber shades, avoiding for the most part
those cheap sensual interpretations in illustrations so commonly
found in volumes of Les Fleurs du MaL I wrote a preface for the
catalogue which I will quote as appropriate to the story of the
drawings.
HOMAGE A BAUDELAIRE
Solely to satisfy a craving of my own, I have made these drawings
for Les Fleurs du Mai of Baudelaire. This Bible of the modern man
has long called to me, and, brooding upon the powerful and subtle
images evoked by long reading, a world comes forth filled with splen
did and maleficent entities.
I am aware that these are not the first drawings for Les Fleurs du
Mai, but I have felt that the erotic and sensuous side has hitherto
been unduly stressed and that drawings of seductive mulattoes, exotic
negresses, and nostalgic Eldorados do not altogether sum up Baude
laire. This forestalls, perhaps, the charge that I have neglected to
illustrate such poems as "L'invitation au Voyage" or "Le Beau Navire."
For long I have been haunted by the images of revolt, anguish, and
despair— disgust with the world and self, expressed in Les Fleurs du
MaL
To evoke upon paper this profoundly felt and pitiful drama was
an aim that called for imaginative and courageous treatment. Here is
an adventure wholly of the soul. Man caught in the snare of sinful
existence seeks to escape La conscience dans le MaL
My technique, my plan of pencil drawings, with a result somewhat
144 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
like that of lithography, is justified by the austere and measured form
of the poems.
Out of sixty drawings I sold fifteen, a very poor result; and
after a fortnight I withdrew the drawings, as I found the Gallery
Directors out of sympathy with them, and really rather ashamed
of them. In such an atmosphere of hostility I thought it best to
shut down and withdraw.
In exhibiting, one must at times accept defeat and go on and
not brood too much on failure.
The Daily Mail art critic wrote as follows:
Horror and near-obscenity, with no aesthetic value that I can per
ceive, stamp Epstein's new drawings on view at the Tooth Gallery
from today.
They are pencil illustrations for Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mai, a col
lection of poems which when published in 1857 brought their author
to the dock on a charge of offending against public morals.
Baudelaire is one of the cursed princes of literature. His association
with a perverse colored woman, his mighty mind obsessed by diseased
sensuousness, his drift in currents of vice and weakness, despite advan
tages of birth, and his recourse to opium and drink which brought on
paralysis and early death— these form a tragic sequence rarely paralleled
in the annals of genius.
But genius of the purest water redeems his abasement like repentance
the sinner.
The Fleurs du Mai— flowers of evil, indeed—are a garden of verbal
beauty astonishing in its tropical luxuriance. The grandeur of its
accumulated growth fills the beholder with heartwrung respect and
holy pity.
Its flaming wealth of colour, black and red, owerawe like a vision
of Satanic fate clasping a magnificent but defenceless soul
What has Epstein done with all this?
He has retained the morbidity, the shameless lasciviousness and made
them even more tangible.
Visual images immobilise literary imagery and break the solemn
cadence of inspired verse, which gradually effaces even the clearest
descriptive passages.
"LES FLEURS DU MAL" 145
And Epstein has produced no beauty of form and composition
analogous to Baudelaire's rhythmic language and able to off-set the
gruesomeness or indecency of the themes.
Take the lines:
"Les yeux fixes sur moi, comrne un tigre dompte,
D'un air vague et reveur elle essay ait des poses,
Et la candeur unie 4 la lubricite
Donnait un charme neuf 4 ses metamorphoses "
Haltingly translated, they say:
The voluptuous temptress is figured by Epstein in the guise of a
naked, malformed contortionist practising a particularly graceless twist
of the torso. Imagine Epstein's notoriously ugly statues of "Night"
and "Genesis" grotesquely playing the role of Potiphar's wife, and
you have his attempt at invoking Baudelaire's muse.
The entire series—with misshapen females, sometimes decapitated,
always repellent; lewd navvies fresh from or leaving for the torturer's
rack; and disgusting embryos— is an insult to good taste— and to Baude
laire.
One sympathises with Epstein's view that "drawings of seductive
mulattoes, exotic Negresses, and nostalgic Eldorados do not altogether
sum up Baudelaire." Unfortunately his transposition is even worse.
It confirms my belief that great poetry is best left unillustrated.
PIERRE JEANNEKAT
The Observer headed its article by Ian Gordon:
COCKROACHES OR FLOWERS
BAUDELAIRE PLUS EPSTEIN
For certain kinds of effects a color may be felt as an intruder, and,
like Picasso in his big decoration Guernica, Epstein in his illustrations
of Les Fleurs du Mai at Tooth's Gallery, has restricted his medium
to what might be almost called pencil "painting" to keep in harmony
with the "austere and measured form of the poems."
When a man with the artistic intelligence of an Epstein says, "This
bible of modern man has long called to me, and brooding upon the
powerful and subtle images evoked by long reading, a world comes
i46 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
forth filled with splendid and maleficent entities," we should pause
before making a hasty criticism. Nevertheless, just as when a musi
cian turns a poem into song, so when a painter turns a poem into
image there is always grave danger that the poet gets overlaid. Clearly
the marriage between the bitter, short-lived nostaligc Baudelaire-
passionate and disgusted revoke though he was, and the stone-hewing
muscular sculptor highly capable of molding his own life into some
thing like the shape he intended it to be, was bound to result in a
strange progeny.
Epstein also says, "I made these drawings solely to satisfy a craving
of my own," but the result is so dynamically forcible to crudity that
he is in danger of obliterating much of what Baudelaire may mean
to us. After all, Baudelaire did entitle his poems "Les Fleurs du Mai"
and that is implicit in the quality of the poems; had he called them
"Les Cafard du Mai" Epstein's drawings would have been more wholly
appropriate.
In fact, one might counsel those who prefer Baudelaire to Epstein
to keep away, but those who prefer Epstein to Baudelaire to go at
any cost.
For viciousness of statement there is little to choose between
these two reviews.
In the best New Statesman manner is the following from the
issue of December 10, 1938:
"LES FLEURS DU MAL"
Now I must place a word about the drawings at Tooth's. "Solely
to satisfy a craving of my own," Mr. Epstein explains, "I have made
these drawings for Les Fleurs du Mai of Baudelaire." Nobody will
question his right to satisfy so private a need, but was it necessary to
expose the results to the public gaze? Mr. Epstein's virtues have always
been vigor and expressiveness, and in his better works these have
gone far to compensate for the absence of distinction and sensibility.
But Baudelaire is a great classical poet, at once marmoreal and ex
quisitely fine. The Racine of the Romantic Movement. Illustrations by
Flaxman for Defoe, by Marie Laurencin for Whitman, by Kokoschka
for Pope, could not be more unsuitable than those Mr. Epstein has
"LES FLEURS DU MAL" 147
made for Baudelaire. And not only are they impertinent, they must be
classed among the emptiest works that he has ever exhibited. He has
sought to express revolt, anguish, and despair— emotions that the
present condition of man must excite in every artist, but compared
with Picasso's Guernica drawings, these are hardly more significant
than graffiti. One does not need to be a Blimp in order to feel that
ugliness is not enough. The greater one's devotion to Baudelaire, the
less one can enjoy these unlucky illustrations. Upstairs in the same
gallery there is a roomful of Paul Nash paintings, most of them not
new, but a nice enough sight for one's sore eyes.
From vulgar abuse to the would-be humors of the above is a
short step. What is odd is that the critic, knowing full well that
his eyes are going to be sorely tried by my drawings, should go out
of his way and afflict himself with these horrors, as the exhibit of
Mr. Nash's work was in a quite different part of the house. The
high-brow critic is often annoyed to find himself in the same boat
as the low-brow critic with regard to me. How irritating to find
yourself bed-fellows with the gutter journalist in questions of art!
The high-brow critic gets round this by asserting that his low
brow twin dislikes me for the "wrong reasons." The truth is that
of course I stand in the light of some little bantam-weight sculptor
of their own, whose sole distinction is an endless capacity for bor
rowing and watering down Picasso, Maillol, or Despiau.
I now reproduce an opinion from the Birmingham Mpil, Decem
ber 7, 1938.
"LES FLEURS DU MAL"
It is the Baudelaire of a very human compassion that Epstein sees
in these drawings for Les Fleurs du Mai ("Flowers of Evil"). These
verses of an unforgettably poignant beauty are for him "this Bible
of the modern man," long brooding upon which, he writes in the
foreword of the catalogue, "brings forth a world filled with splendid
and maleficent entities."
Some of the entities are like die gargoyles at Winchcombe, to take
the best near examples of the kind of Gothic fantasy which Epstein's
148 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
drawings resemble in their fertility of invention, and occasionally in
manner. And there is a curious reflection for you: the Gothic gargoyle
was an adventure of the soul— a phrase which Epstein uses in descrip
tion of his work. Adventures of the soul are not, unfortunately, popular
nowadays. In any case, they are likely too soon to be confronted by
the modern Inquisition of totalitarianism.
ESSENTIAL HUMANISM
More than a Gothic reminder, however, is to be seen in these absorb
ing drawings. In manner and emotional significance they are widely
varied. Here and there they have a mournfulness and a profundity of
serious expression which irresistibly recall the mysticism of Da Vinci.
If, on the whole, they should be found strange and difficult to under
stand, that must be because the all-embracing humanism of which they
are an expression, like the verses that inspire them, is in itself a quality
in eclipse today, in the visual arts perhaps rather more than in most
things.
"For long," writes Epstein, "I have been haunted by the images of
revolt, anguish and despair— disgust with the world and self— expressed
in Les Fleurs du Mai. But let it not be imagined that the drawings
are piquant tit-bits offered to a public appetite omnivorous for the
confessions of the great. Nor are they tracts for the times, except in
the sense that all art is a tract for the times. The fact is that they
exemplify the real and the rare artistic capacity for making a personal
statement to which a universal significance is added. Art, or what
passes for it, is everything nowadays, from the exercises of an arid
inteUectualisin to the erotic perversities of surrealism. But it still re
mains for Epstein to beat the abstractionists and the surrealists at their
own game, by giving us an art in which the intellectual expression is
made properly the vehicle of the emotion intended to be conveyed.
To put it another way, he comes at natural forms through a creative
intelligence which, knowing the values of symbolism and its limits,
can invest the forms with the meaning that is achieved only through
the language of art.
"LES FLEURS DU MAL" 149
GREATER SUBTLETY
These drawings reveal a decided advance in command of the subtle
ties of linear forms of expression as compared with the Old Testa
ment drawings of a few years ago. Here and there, perhaps, greater
use of the effects of chiaroscuro would not come amiss, the dramatic
purport being what it is. But on technical grounds it is illuminating
to observe the freedom and resourcefulness in which rhythmic patterns
are discovered to fit the emotional theme. They vary from such rela
tively simple devices as the "Danse Macabre" drawing, where a re
cumbent skeleton-like figure is seen against a background in which a
fountain plays, to the elaborate synthesis of elliptical forms in one of
the drawings to "Une Gravure Fantastique."
The directness of inspiration from the text is evident in most ex
amples, and is matched, in a unique degree, by ease and grace of
accomplishment. "Les Fleurs du Mai" is a theme felt acutely enough,
but of the artist's joy in creation there is no doubt.
L. B. POWELL
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
"Adam"
( 1939 )
MY last large carving was worked in a block of alabaster that
had been for several years in my studio. The conception,
fairly clear in my mind in its general outlines, developed a law of
its own as it proceeded, and I managed to get a tremendous move
ment within the compass of a not very wide, upright stone. The
movement lies not in flung-out forms, but in an inner energy,
comparable to a dynamo where a tremendous energy is generated.
Into no other work had I merged myself so much, yet an Australian
said to me, "It is as if a people had done this work and not just
an individual." I feel also that generations spoke through me,
and the inner urge that took shape here was the universal one.
For some time, owing to my having portraits to do, I was re
tarded in finishing it. Then, having a couple of months of freedom,
I made a great spurt, working on it relentlessly, day after day, and
I had it in a fit state to exhibit when my long promised exhibition
at the Leicester Galleries took place.
I am not particularly secretive about my work, but I find that if
I show a work of mine to friends in the process of carving, they
are inclined to try and stay my hand by exclaiming, "Oh, leave it
like that. It is so interesting in that state."
A carving is interesting from the moment you begin it, and in
that lies the danger of showing an unfinished work; so I make it a
rule not to show my carvings. I am therefore accused of being
150
"ADAM" 151
secretive. In this case, I at first let my Gallery Directors know
only that I was at work upon an Adam, and with this they had to
be content. When I did let them see the carving, they said nothing
and left my studio. The next day they wrote to me saying that they
could not see their way to showing the statue. I was astounded, and
did not try to persuade them. Their fears seemed groundless to
me, and I recalled with amusement that this gallery had, a short
time before this, shown a series of French colored engravings that
were decidedly "near the bone," in fact did not leave anything
ambiguous as far as pornography went.
As I had other work to show, bronzes and a series of drawings
of children, I was anxious about the success of my exhibition, and
let it be known that I would not withdraw my Adam and ex
hibit the rest. Thereupon the Directors paid another visit to my
studio, finally to make up their minds. I left them alone with Adam
for three hours, after which, with many qualms and forebodings,
they agreed to< show the carving.
All this I took in a rather bantering spirit, as I could not for the
life of me see anything to be afraid of. The result justified my
anticipations. The exaggerated fears of the Directors were super
fluous, interest in the work was shown by the attendance, and apart
from the usual intentional misunderstandings of the filthy press,
and the deliberate personal insults of the so-called "left intel
ligentsia," the work was well received. Perhaps I have at last edu
cated the public, if not to a complete understanding, to at any rate
a more tolerant attitude.
Foaming at the mouth and foul abuse were for once absent The
only drawback in this exhibition was that a collection of child
studies, on which I had set much store, was completely overlooked.
So much for the interest in beautiful sculpture and drawings that
a great many persons profess. They exclaim, "Why does not
Epstein do something beautiful? Why always monsters?" You ex
hibit a collection of drawings of children and bronzes into which
you have put your matured talent, and the gaze of all these people
is spell-bound upon the "monster," and they fail utterly to see
152 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
the small works for which they have always clamored. Go into
any gallery in London—the British Museum, the National Gallery,
the Tate Gallery, or South Kensington Museum—and you will find
them empty. You can enjoy the works without any crowding.
Perhaps you will see a solitary wastrel trying to snatch a few
minutes sleep upon a bench. When I first lived in London, I had
a studio near the British Museum, and for a period visited it daily.
I can say that never once did I meet a sculptor there. In fact, I
discovered that sculptors would be rather ashamed to be seen in the
British Museum, as painters would not care to be caught in the
National Gallery. Their notion is that they would be thought
to be cribbing something, borrowing something; and of course that
would never do. Artists have a feeling that if they studied ancient
work, they would be thought less original, liable to be influenced.
English art students do not mind being influenced by some third-
rate teacher in an art school, but at the idea of being influenced by
the great works in the Museum by a Raphael, a Mantegna, or a
Veronese, I can almost hear them exclaim, "God save us! Never!"
Despite the skepticism and fears of the Directors of the Leicester
Gallery, the Adam was well received. Some of the criticism was
naturally hostile, but no more so than usual. When a purchaser
came along, the gallery was astounded, and also the newspapers,
who showed their hostility by leading articles commenting on the
purchase. One paper wondered why a "statue completely out of
joint," as they called it, should be bought, and another commented
on the purchase price, which was rumored as £7,000, and ex
pressed its amazement and almost horror that a work of sculpture
should fetch so high a price. This paper, which naturally reports
deals in business amounting to hundreds of thousands, nay millions,
of pounds, with no comment, raised its eyebrows in astonishment
that I could "easily" earn £7,000. One thinks of what is spent on
armaments, warships, airplanes, gas, and engines of destruction of
all kinds in the world; the industries of death. Think of the manner
in which millions of pounds are made on the stock exchange, by
looking at the ticker— in offices, with the help of managers, vast
ADAM
"ADAM" 153
staffs, and with no surprising comment by leader critics; yet the
fact that a sculptor, single-handed, could with all his out-of-pocket
expenses, overhead charges for studio, sustenance for himself and
his family, and the labor of about fifteen months, earn the mag
nificent sum of ;£ 7,000 passes their belief. Of this sum received,
one quarter is deducted for the gallery, another quarter or more
goes to the Income Tax, and to sum up, and to make the whole
thing more grotesque, the actual price of the work was not one
quarter of the published sum.
The vast sums expended on death and destruction, or for mil
lions of foolish and banal activities, are taken for granted.
To end this chronicle to my own satisfaction for once, I will
leave out the mud-slinging articles and comments, and publish two
reviews: one by Mr. L. B. Powell in the Birmingham Mail of June
9, 1939, and the other by William McCance* in Picture Post of
June 24, 1939.
Crowded private view days are not the best occasions for seeing
great works of art, but they cannot be improved upon for hearing
what people say regarding them. I shall remember yesterday's private
view at the Leicester Galleries, London, of Epstein's "Adam," his latest,
and in every way his most imposing addition to the series of big scale
carvings which are unequalled in the free sculpture of our time, for a
chance conversation with a visitor from New York.
"To me," she said, with that charming diffidence which seems char
acteristic of cultured New Yorkers, " 'Adam' is as if it were not made
by a man, but by mankind."
Now there is a phrase which any professional writer upon art must
envy. Powerful impressions are not often sorted out with such clarity,
or with such complete embodying of a world of thought in a few
words, and I am sure nothing better than this can be said about
"Adam."
With equal confidence it can be said that no one who sees only a
photographic reproduction of this piece of monumental sculpture in
alabaster (I call it "free" because it is unrelated to any architectural
* See Appendix X, "Adam."
i54 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
requirements) can feel about it in the same way. The experience is
one to be gained only in the presence of the thing itself: and there, it is
to be feared, the melancholy end to all philosophic or other specula
tion upon the emotions expressed in any manifestation of the creative
artistic impulse would be to say one either is, or is not, born to the
way of grasping its meaning.
EARTH-BOUND
But this is a sort of doctrine of determinism, applied perhaps much
too readily to what is very far from being ineluctable or unchange
able. We may reject an idea outright, think it wholly disposed of,
and yet unconsciously be profoundly influenced by it. I take the
American visitor's words to mean what Epstein himself hoped and
knew he would mean in this elemental depiction of man, earth-bound
but reaching upwards because man knows no other destiny, and can
put himself, when all his frailty is reckoned, to no better purpose.
Not, it is important to observe if and when you are lucky enough to
stand before the carving itself, reaching upwards with the hands,
which are raised only to the level of the chest and there significantly
left; but reaching mentally with all his faculties on the stretch, with
the mind symbolized by the head thrown back until its line is hori
zontal and the eyes escape detection in their skyward stare.
The whole attitude of the figure is this gesture of reaching, and
they will escape the deep extra-physical meaning of "Adam" who
point out that the features of the face cannot be seen without the
aid of a ladder. This objection, one very likely to be heard, springs
from the same fallacy as some of the objections to "Genesis," and
accordingly, "Let's see if we recognize the woman" becomes "Do we
know anybody like this man? "—as if sculpture, when it is the image
of thought, should be judged by its resemblance to people we meet
in the street.
And yet, standing before "Adam" long enough, it is presently made
obvious that we do know him very well indeed. We meet him, in
fact, every day, for he is none other than our next-door neighbour.
He has been our neighbour since man began, and likely as not, he
perceives in our own lineaments just the same points of identification.
"ADAM" 155
NON-ACCEPTANCE
Therefore I would say, to blazes with the idea of recognising him
as a detachable entity. He is not a man, but mankind, and a point about
this universal analogy is surely that genius is so far removed from
abnormality that it is always pregnant with meaning for men every
where. To which it may be added that the culture of any period or
of any people is to be measured by the readiness with which it accepts
those who are subsequently regarded by general consent as geniuses.
My American commentator desired to know if Epstein had been ac
cepted in England, to which I felt obliged to reply that he had not.
I believe this in spite of the fact that an exhibition of flower paintings
by him, or of Old Testament drawings, or portraits of children, will
sell out in a few days; and of the fact that the bronze portraits are
fairly well bought, or of the knowledge that "Night" and "Day" have
not yet been pulled down to make room for a group by a Royal
Academician showing a dance of sugar-plum fairies.
I believe it because acceptance, in the sense in which we are think
ing, would imply widespread admission of the influence of the artist
as a teacher of truths that are essentially religious in nature: between
which and being a teacher of religion a world of difference exists.
Yes, but with "Adam" in mind, what sort of truths? I can best
attempt an answer by saying that if the carving has any influence at
all upon thought and feeling, it must surely be to send us away
humbled. Not, please, in Uriah Keep's understanding of the word, but
essentially, the taking on of humility.
And there's the rub. When the American visitor remarks that we
have lost the faculty of looking at things simply, she was implying also
that we have become so knowledgeable as to resist, with a good deal
of indignation, the underlying expectation of the creative genius that
we should look upon his work as if it were something done for the
very first time. The suggestion even that it is part of the artist's busi
ness to teach us humility accounts for the continued strangeness, the
remoteness of Epstein, and the repulsion which many feel towards
his work. We swing easily to the opposite view: it has become bar
barous to suppose that we retain any relic of primitive man. What
with one thing and another— the methods and materials of modern war
156 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
for example, we are confident that we have civilised the brute out of
existence and do not feel flattered when Epstein or anybody else has
the effrontery to hint that we are still groping, as he groped, towards
some irresistible light.
Not to put too fine a point on it, it seems to me Epstein is rejected
because, after all, he is inferring that the blasphemy may be in hearts
other than his own. Of "Adam" it is certainly true, as of most other
art, that we find in it what we bring to it.
L. B. POWELL.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Children
I HAVE always been attracted by children as models for plastic
work. I feel that the life of children has hardly been touched
upon in sculpture, and this representation is avoided perhaps be
cause of the difficulties which confront an artist who sets out to
present a child. For one thing, the child cannot sit still, and to
compel a child to be quiet is to destroy at once the spontaneity
and charm which lie in its frank and natural expressions. Yet I have
attempted time after time this most difficult subject for sculpture.
In Joan Greenwood there is the precocious child with elfin smile,
and in portraits of Peggy-Jean. I made many studies, Peggy- Jean
"Laughing Studies" and Peggy-Jean "Sleeping Studies." Lately I
have indulged my fancy for this expression in sculpture by studies
of colored children, and the studies of Jackie and others in bronze,
and drawings, of which I have made a whole series of endless
moods and variety of movement. Here again I have not restrained
myself, but freely given what I have observed and felt, and I know
that I have by no means exhausted the subject. The Florentines had
a special love of children. From Donatello's mad incarnations of
robust vitality, to graceful Verrocchio's, to the waywardness of a
Desiderio da Settignano.
To work from a child the sculptor has to have endless patience.
He must wait and observe, and observe and wait. The small forms,
so seemingly simple, are in reality so subtle, and the hunting of the
form is an occupation that is at once tantalizing and fascinating.
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158 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
At the end of an hour or two, the nerves of an artist are torn to
shreds, and neurasthenia and eye strain might well result from a
too-prolonged preoccupation with this form of sculptural expres
sion.
A BABE
This "Babe" confronts time and his destiny with round, creased
arms and hands held out before him, as if in self -protection. He
boldly and trustingly looks out upon a world newly born to his
vision. This is a man-child, and bis sturdy frame is like that of an
Egyptian King in its compact lines. Every form is full, complete,
and with a sense of new, fresh power. This man-child confronts a
world which we older ones know only too well, and our gray,
haggard glance must light up at this fresh revelation—an undying
flame of life embodied again.
THE STUDIES OF PEGGY-JEAN
To have a child to work from was delightful. The little Peggy-
Jean was a real source of inspiration. I never tired of watching her,
and to watch her was for me to work from her— to make studies
in clay of all her moods; and when she tired and fell asleep, there
was something new to do, charming and complete. To work from
a child seemed to me the only work worth doing, and I was pre
pared to go on for the rest of my life looking at Peggy-Jean, and
making new studies of her. I exhibited these later in one of my ex
hibitions, and the reactions of some persons were far from amusing.
Of the "Peggy- Jean Asleep," one kind soul said, "How cruel of
Mr. Epstein to compel a child to pose like that." Others said, "She
is not at all a pretty child," as if that was the sole business of the
artist to find a "pretty" child to work from.
I regret that I have not done more children, and I plan some day
to do only children. I think I should be quite content with that,
and not bother about the grownups at all. I would love to fill my
studio with studies of children. Children just born. Children grow
ing up., Children nude. Children in fantastic costumes "en prince"
PUTTI (PEGGY- JEAN)
THE SICK CHILD (PEGGY-JEAN)
CHILDREN 159
with pets of all kinds, and toys. Dark children, pickaninnies, Chi
nese, Mongolian-eyed children.
This is a fancy, a dream of mine; but naturally I must sometimes
turn to and earn a living like other persons, and not indulge too
much in strange and unrealizable longings and desires.
DRAWINGS OF JACKIE
I begin the drawings of Jackie, and at first my drawings are
somewhat sketchy, loose; although from the beginning I know
what I want to render. It is the life, free, careless and apprehensive
at the same time, of the little boy with his lively intelligence and
quick ways, especially his eyes, and also his expressive hands in
their infinite and unconscious gestures, that I wish to capture. I
find that I must have great patience, as there is no such thing as
posing; I have to watch for the return of a gesture and the move
ment of the head. The same movement of the arms or hands never
seems to recur, and I often rise after an hour or two, enervated
and discouraged, with nothing to show but an abandoned begin
ning. Gradually I seem to gain in swiftness and assurance, and the
drawings become more satisfactory. I reject a dozen drawings, and
one seems to me to have got something of the litde fellow's
peculiarity. I have him read to, and that fixes his attention. The
stories with pictures hold him, especially drawings of animals.
Rabier's graphic accounts above all, and stories about snakes fas
cinate him. At the adventures of the monkey, the rabbit, the
hedgehog, and the ducks, he roars with delight, and I then work
with devoted fury and attention.
In time I see hundreds of things to do, all different. The draw
ings are like preludes and fugues, or, to put it better, variations on
a theme— the theme of young child life. An endless series of varia
tions. I can see no monotony in my studies of this boy, although
that is the easiest and readiest criticism. Today, variety means
something different from what it once did. To me, the changes of
expression in a child's head, the change of the direction of the
pupil of the eye, the contraction and expansion of the eye, the
i6o LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
change in nostrils and cheeks, give great variety, such variety as
it would take a highly sensitive and skillful observer to record. A
technique must be at one's command, transcending mere stylism.
The aim must be achieved, whatever the means.
As I say, I work with fury and appetite, and before the miracle
of the child's moods, I am almost nonplussed; but a partial achieve
ment spurs me on, and with the multiplicity of drawings I feel the
abundant harvest has made my efforts well worth while. I look
upon this body of drawings of a child as a legacy well worth
achieving. In reviewing them now, I see a development in tech
nique, and a final mastery, also great variety of line and rendering
of form, through light and shade. I compare these drawings with
any others I have made, and am pleased at their lightness and sol
idity. I feel really sorry that I have sold a number, as I would
like to have kept them intact as a collection. My drawings of Jackie
present a period of my life and mark out, through drawings, a
plastic expression I am proud of. To have captured the fugitive and
endless expressions and changes of movement of a child has beep a
rare experience.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
African and Other
^'Primitive" Carvings
WHEN I was in Paris in 1912, I saw an advertisement in a
colonial paper asking for African carvings in hardwood.
Calling at the address in Montmartre, I met Paul Guillaume for
the first time, in a small attic room. He started the vogue in African
work. Of course, it was the artists who first saw the sculptural
qualities of African work, and they were followed by the dealer,
who saw money in it. Picasso, Matisse, and Vlaminck collected
African carvings, and I myself bought pieces at prices I could
afford. "Art snobs" quickly took it up. The prices rose so that now
there is keen bidding at the Hotel Drouot and Sothebys for
African and Polynesian work. In New York not long ago, at the
Museum of Modern Art, a large exhibition was held. I was amused
that Lord Duveen should ask me to exhibit ten pieces there out of
my collection. The idea of Lord Duveen's taking an interest in an
art so alien was ludicrous, and just another example of the facile
and unthought-out opinion of the opportunists of art. There is a
profound and genuine reason for a sculptor's interest in African
art, for new methods and problems are presented in it different
from those of European art. African work opens up to us a world
hitherto unknown, and exhibits characteristics that are far removed
from our traditional European rendering of form in Greek, in
Gothic, or in Renaissance traditions. The African pieces are al
most entirely wood carvings, and the wood block is the basis,
161
1 62 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
Single figures and masks predominate; the group is rare, although
some exist. As fetishes their importance is religious, or at any rate
magical. They were used to impress, terrify, and impart to the
beholders a state of mind bordering on, or actually, hallucinatory.
Unless one understands this purpose in the masks they can only be
regarded as grotesque and fantastic. In fact, that is how most of us
look upon them. At one time they were also thought to be devoid
of skill, crude and incapably savage. We now know better, and no
more cogent example could be presented of how accepted notions
in matters of art can be changed, and even completely revised.
In the reaction against European sculpture, the newly enlight
ened are inclined to declare European, Greek, and Egyptian sculp
ture insipid and meaningless. This is a great error. It is as if someone
became greatly enamored of exotic foods and turned aside from
all normal nourishment, with disastrous results to his digestion.
African works lend themselves to analysis of their plasticity, and
several writers have attempted such analyses. I have in my posses
sion the great work called "Brummer Head" which I had seen in
Joseph Brummer's shop in Paris many years before in 1913. On
that occasion when I asked the price of it, this astute dealer told
me there was no price to it and removed the work from view. The
piece was later sold and disappeared. In 1935, when all Paris was
seeking it, the owner having just died, I came on it by chance in
a dealer's basement. I was looking at some indifferent pieces when,
opening a cupboard, I saw it hidden away as if it were not meant
to be seen. I immediately negotiated for it, and secured it, much
to the surprise and chagrin of the Paris dealers.
This remarkable Pahouin head has qualities which transcend
the most mysterious Egyptian work. It is an evocation of a spirit
that penetrates into another world, a world of ghosts and occult
forces, and could only be produced where spiritism still holds
sway. On the plastic side also, the head is very remarkable, with
its surrounding prongs of hair off-setting the large roundness of
the forehead, a perfect example of free wood carving.
I have also the head known as the "Grand Bieri Head," also
"PRIMITIVE" CARVINGS 163
Pahouin, which once belonged to Paul Guillaume and which has
very impressive qualities. In the De Mire sale of 1932, a superb col
lection was dispersed at the Hotel Drouot. This was undoubtedly
the finest collection of African outside a museum, and the great
standing figure from Gabun River equals anything that has come
out of Africa. This piece, with its natural poise and striking head,
is very remarkable. It has the astounding attitude of being held
spellbound by sorcery. It still retains the metal discs used for eyes,
bringing light into the dark head.
Often the figures are clothed in brass ornaments which enhance
by variation of material the effect of the sculpture. The masks ex
hibit a great variety of form, changing in character according to
the use for which they were made. Some are terrible in their ex
pression of horror, others are solemn and indrawn, and there are
others still which are pensive, mysterious, and brooding. Often they
carry fetish emblems on top, birds or animals, alligators or insects.
We, of course, see them now as isolated pieces on pedestals, but
if we can imagine them as originally used in their sacred or tribal
dances, worn by the fetish men moving through the crowds of on
lookers brought to the highest pitch of excitement by drums and
chanting, we can understand that their effect must have been tre
mendous. Now we can study at leisure their formal relations and
coldly calculate how the parts are correlated, and examine the laws
of rhythm and form they embody.
I believe there is an attempt in Africa, under sympathetic Gov
ernment teachers, to revive the art of wood carving and clay
modeling. I have seen some examples of this work, and they are dis
appointing. The life has gone out of them; the impulse is not a
living one. A European outlook has been substituted for the native
African, and however hard the young artist tries to embody his
own naive feelings, he is no longer a "believer," and the result is
only more or less trained craftsmanship. Perhaps in the future a
new African genius will arise. He will not be the African of the
past. The whole future of Africa, especially of its native peoples,
is so obscure that it is no use prophesying. Of the past Africa we
164 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
have these carvings. I have, because of my appreciation of and my
enthusiasm for African work, been accused as if it were a crime
of being largely influenced by it. That is not so!
My sculpture (apart from a short period in 1912-1913 when
cubism was in the air, and abstraction an interesting experiment)
has remained in the European tradition of my early training. Most
advanced painters and sculptors have been influenced by primitive
work. This includes Matisse, Gauguin, Picasso, Modigliani, Bran-
cusi, Henry Moore, Lipshitz, and many lesser artists. When I say
that my work is not African, I do not rebut what I would be
ashamed to admit, but simply state a fact. Brancusi, some of whose
early work was influenced by African art, now declares categor
ically that one must not be influenced by African, and he even
went so far as to destroy work of his that he thought had African
influence in it.
THE NEW GUINEA GROUP
These two frail, ghostlike figures rise somewhat obliquely, mov
ing away from each other. They are spirits not of earth. The earth
part of them has been drained out. They are Mother and Son, an
cestral ghosts, or Husband and Wife. The female is the taller of
the two. Their feet slant downwards. The inexpressible melancholy
of their heads is matched by the delicate hands, fingers like the
tracery of veins on leaves... a breath... a frailty unparalleled.
Their four limbs are like water plants rising out of liquid pedes
tals. They have lain a long time at the bottom of a lake in New
Guinea. I saw them for the first time in Paris. The enchantment of
the group is beyond description, and I so desired them that I mort
gaged my future earnings for a long time to be able to obtain
them. Their discreet and sympathetic presence lifts me into a world
as ethereal as the last quartets of Beethoven ... a sighing, wind
blown regret. A message is sent out as ineffable as autumn mist
arising from damp woodlands, plaintive, like a single-noted melody
played in the obscurity of a forest. This is a piece of sculpture
LYDIA
"PRIMITIVE" CARVINGS 165
which seems to reject the very quality by which sculpture exists,
solidity of form.
Primitive sculpture is supposed to be rude, savage, the product
of uncultured and uncivilized peoples. I find, on the contrary,
restraint in craftsmanship, delicacy and sensitiveness, a regard for
the material, and none of the stupid vulgarity, pomposity, and
crudeness so evident in sculpture today, and most especially in the
sculpture at the Paris Exhibition in 1937. Compare the blatant
nudes to be seen everywhere at that exhibition with these two
beings, evocations, one might call them, and the difference is at
once apparent; it is easily understood why the intelligent modern
sculptor turns with relief to them. They are a haven of culture
in a world of pretense and pornography. When primitive work
expresses the principle of sex, it does it in a manner which cannot
be offensive. First, because it is frankly sexual, and moreover is
part of an attitude which can only be termed ritualistic. Those
African statues which are double-sexed are undoubtedly ritual
works, embodying the sexual principle in life and are in no way
offensive.
In Indian work of this nature there is a deeply religious element,
sometimes amounting to a fury of passion which is elemental in
its power. Shiva dances, creating the world and destroying it. His
large rhythms conjure up vast eons of time, and his movements
have a relentless and magical power of incantation. A small group
at the British Museum is the most tragic summing up of the death-
in-love motive I have ever seen; it epitomizes, as no other work,
the fatal element in human passion. Our European allegories are
banal and pointless by comparison with these profound works,
devoid of the trappings of symbolism, concentrating on the essen
tial, the essentially plastic.
The modern sculptor without religion, without direction, tra
dition, and stability, is at a terrible disadvantage compared with
the sculptors of previous periods. He has to invent even his subject
matter, and he has at last been driven into the cul-de-sac of "pure
form," where he is either making works which are totally mean-
i66 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
ingless, or repeating endlessly the same set of forms with slight
variations.
THE MASK OF NEFERTITI
From an English collection, where it had lain unrecognized since
1904, 1 obtained the mask of the Egyptian Queen. This life-sized
mask is undoubtedly the original of the bust in the Berlin Museum.
I have not seen the Berlin stone bust, but judging from photographs
and a cast I have of it, this mask is more sensitive, and if anything
more aristocratic than the bust. The calm-faced Queen, with her
cold, mysterious glance, is a real presence, a person out of the past,
almost alive, with extraordinary beauty of modeling from the
lower eyelid, along the cheek, to the mouth with the closed, full
lips. It is one of the most wonderful works in the world, this mask.
Whether it is a life-mask, worked over, or whether it is the work
wholly of a sculptor, it is difficult to1 determine. It has some of the
elements of a life-mask, but the formalism of the brow and the
open eyes suggest modeling. Here is the Queen, whose husband,
Akhenaton, attempted to establish a new order in a land ruled by
conservative priesthood, abolishing the old gods and substituting
the life-giving Sun instead; who detested war and all violence, and
whose city was a city of beauty, flowers, and prayers. There
seems to radiate from this mask a perfume of loveliness as if the deli
cate flesh were a flower itself, giving out perfume only just per
ceptible.
I turn this mask into a different light, and now it is a weary
dead face, pleased to be dead, anticipating that mask in Cairo,
where the Queen is emaciated, tragic— the thin neck hardly able
to uphold the shrunken and sorrowful head. Here, removed from
the strife of the living, is the silent witness to a destiny noble and
pathetic. The sculptor becomes the priest of sorrow and beauty.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The British Museum
and Greek Sculpture
SOME few years after the war, in visiting the British Museum,
I noticed that some of the Greek marbles were being restored.
This reprehensible practice I had thought long gone out. Later,
one day to my horror I noticed that the Demeter statue had been
tampered with. A plaster nose had been added, and other additions
had been made to shoulders and neck. Also the head had received
a savage scraping. I had observed with apprehension how work
men of the Museum were severely manhandling the marbles with
some kind of sand and scrubbing brushes. This restoration of so
beautiful a work as the Demeter, made me feel that I had reached
the end of my endurance, so I wrote a letter on May 2, 1921, to
the Times as follows:
SIR,
All those who care for antique sculpture view with astonishment
and dismay the present policy followed by the British Museum authori
ties in restoring the Marbles, that is, working them up with new
plaster noses, etc.
I have remarked with growing alarm, marble after marble so treated
during the last year. I felt the futility of protesting, and so held my
peace, but now that the incredible crime of "restoring" the head of
the Demeter of Cnidus has at last been committed, the atrocity calls
for immediate protest.
No doubt the Museum authorities do not really like the Marbles in
167
i68 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
their possession, but why they should translate the masterpieces into
something more nearly approaching the Albert Moore ideal of Greek,
passes my understanding. The Demeter has not only been improved
with a new plaster nose, but to bring the rest of the head into con
sistency with the nose, the whole face had been scraped and cleaned,
thus destroying the mellow golden patine of centuries. Other im
portant pieces "improved" are the marble boy extracting a thorn from
his foot, and the very fine priestess from Cnidus, so altered as to give
an entirely different effect from that it originally had. How long are
these vandals to have in their "care" the golden treasury of sculpture
which at least they might leave untouched?
Yours respectfully,
JACOB EPSTEIN
I was severely taken to task for my letter. Professor Gardiner
wrote a letter in defense of the Museum authorities and said it was
only a matter of differences of opinion between two schools of
thought, in fact, merely an academic question. Any damage to
the statues was scouted, and the discussion ended by the Times
itself awarding the museum officials 100 per cent marks, the maxi
mum, for their custodianship, I suppose.
Two years later Dr. Bernard Smith hit upon the idea of squirt
ing onto the Demeter's head raspberry juice from a syringe. This
again called the attention of the British Museum officials to the
restorations, and this amazing incident was instrumental in finally
convincing them of the wisdom of removing the false nose. How
ever, all this was only a prelude to something far graver which
has happened this year (1939), and of which the last has not yet
been heard.
That is the cleaning and restoring of the Elgin Marbles. So far
any damage done has remained a mystery, as the marbles have not
since been put on view; but a speaker in the House, referring to
his report from the British Museum authorities, said:
The marbles are in process of transference to the new gallery, but
none of those so far transferred have suffered in any way by the
removal So far as cleaning is concerned, I am informed by the Trus-
BRITISH MUSEUM AND SCULPTURE 169
tees of the British Museum that there has been some unauthorised
cleaning of some of the Marbles, but that it is not yet possible to
determine precisely what the effect has been. I am assured, however,
that the effects are imperceptible to anyone but an expert, and I think
it follows that the intrinsic beauty of the Marbles has not been im
paired.*
Also the resignation of two officials and the dismissal of the
head cleaner from the Museum staff points to some very grave
condition of the Elgin Marbles. Mr. Arthur Holcomb, the head
cleaner of the British Museum, in an interview with the Daily
Express, May 19, 1939, says:
"I was told to begin cleaning the Elgin Marbles two years ago. As
head man I was put in charge of six Museum labourers. We were
given a solution of soap and water and ammonia. First we brushed the
dirt off the Marbles with a soft brush. Then we applied the solution
with the same brush. After that we sponged them dry, then wiped
them over with distilled water.
"That was all we were told to do. To get off softie of the dirtier
spots I rubbed the Marbles with a blunt copper tool. Some of them
were as black with dirt as that grate," said Mr. Holcomb, pointing
to his grate.
"As far as I know, all that had been done for years to clean them
was to blow them with bellows.
"The other men borrowed my copper tools and rubbed the Marbles
with them as I did. I knew it would not do them any harm, because
the copper is softer than the stone. I have used the same tools for
cleaning the Marbles at the Museum under four Directors.
"One or two of the slabs of the frieze came up rather white, and
I am afraid they caused the trouble. But anybody who knows any
thing about marble knows that if you treat two slabs in exactly the
same manner it is possible that they will come up a different colour.
"All the time that we were working, officials of the Museum were
passing through the room. We had been at it fifteen months, when I
was told there was a complaint.
* Extract from the Times, May 20, 1939, from a speech by Captain Crook-
shank, Financial Secretary to the Treasury.
170 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
"The six men and I were called before the Committee of Trustees
and the Director of the Museum. We went in separately and they
asked us all kinds of questions about how we had been cleaning the
Marbles."
I have repeatedly pointed out the danger to our national heritage
from officials who have no expert or technical knowledge of sculp
ture, and I have insisted that sculptors— men who are brought
up with sculpture— should be on the Board of Trustees. My advice
is ignored, and one would imagine from the attitude of the official
bodies that I was, ironically enough, the enemy of the antique
work, instead of, as it happens, its most sincere protector. In a
controversy carried on lately in the Times, Sir George Hill, a
former Director of the British Museum, seemed bent, as you
will see from letters here given, on proving that my eyesight de
ceived me and that I, the sculptor Epstein, mistook a plaster cast
for a marble! To such miserable shifts do the Museum officials
descend in their efforts to discredit criticism of their stupidities.
On May 19, 1 wrote to the Times as follows:
SIR,
In your issue of May znd, 1921, I protested against the cleaning
and restoring of the Greek Marbles at the British Museum, particularly
the Demeter of Cnidus. My protest went unheeded, and I was jeered
at for concerning myself with what I was told was no business of
mine. Eighteen years have passed, and now the cleaning and restora
tion of the Elgin Marbles are causing uneasiness, and questions are
asked as to whether the famous Marbles have been damaged in the
process. The British Museum authorities have admitted that the change
in the Marbles is only to be distinguished by the practised eye "of
an expert," wherever that resides! An interview published with the
Press with the Head Cleaner of the Marbles has elicited the information
that a copper tool "softer than marble" (how incredible) was used.
Why a cleaner and six hefty men should be allowed for fifteen months
to tamper with the Elgin Marbles as revealed by the head cleaner,
passes die comprehension of a sculptor. When wiU the British Museum
BRITISH MUSEUM AND SCULPTURE 171
authorities understand that they are only the custodians and never the
creators of these masterpieces?
Faithfully yours,
JACOB EPSTEIN
Sir George Hill answered this letter, by writing to the Times,
May 19, 1939:
SIR,
In his letter to you of today's date Mr. Jacob Epstein refers to his
letter of May 2nd, 1921, in which he complained of the "Cleaning"
and restoring of the Greek Marbles at the British Museum, particularly
the Demeter of Cnidus. He now complains that his protest went
unheeded; but he must have missed the statement of your issue on May
3rd, and Professor Gardiner's letter of May 4th. Had he read these
he would have understood that the Demeter had not been cleaned
in the drastic way which he alleged. The "restoration" was confined
to the experimental addition of the nose in plaster which could be
easily, and was indeed immediately afterwards removed.
A point that was not made in those communications, however, may
be mentioned here. The Demeter has never had a "mellow golden
patine" within living memory. (My own memories of her go back to
the eighties.) But the plaster cast which, for safety's sake, filled her
place during the War was of a nice yellow colour. Mr. Epstein must
have become accustomed to the cast, which less expert critics than
himself may well have taken for an original.
I may be allowed to add that no such thing as "restoration" of the
Parthenon Marbles has been or will be undertaken as long as the
authorities of the British Museum have them in their keeping; and
no "cleaning" other than simple washing with neutral soap and distilled
water is authorised in the Museum. I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
GEORGE HILL
I answered this letter of Sir George Hill's by writing to the
Times on May 22, 1939, as follows:
SIR,
With regard to the Elgin Marbles and the Demeter of Cnidus, Sir
George Hill in his letter in your issue of today imagines that I took
i72 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
no cognizance of the letters and statements following my letter of
May 2nd, 1921. He mentions Professor Percy Gardiner's letter of May
4th, 1921, in which, as I recall, the Professor indulged himself in what
was to my mind merely a scholastic discussion, and ignored the vital
issues at stake.
All these letters and statements, as I pointed out in my letter of
your last issue, were directed towards one purpose, which was to
point out how wrong I was in criticising the British Museum authori
ties, and I summed them all up there by saying simply, "My protest
went unheeded." The proof of this statement is that there is now
a very grave question about the cleaning of the Elgin Marbles.
Sir George Hill was Keeper at the British Museum during the years
1921-30; he will doubtless be able to recall that far from the Demeter's
restorations being removed immediately, they were only removed in
February, 1923, about two years later, when Dr. Bernard Smith, ex
asperated beyond endurance by the obduracy of the Museum authori
ties, had squirted coloured juice on the head of the Demeter, thereby
forcing the Museum to take action.
Sir George is at circumstantial pains to prove that I was unacquainted
with the original marble and that, as he so disingenuously suggests, I
may have mistaken a plaster cast shown during the War for the
Demeter. My memory of the Demeter goes back to 1904, not very
much later than Sir George's. I am not mistaken when I assert that
the head of the Demeter of Cnidus was drastically treated in 1921.
It is not only a question of "a yellow golden patine" but of what is
far more important, the scraping of the surfaces, and the effect of that
scraping on the planes of the marble. I have myself seen the workmen
at the Museum at work on the Marbles, and have been horrified by
the methods employed.
Sir George ignores the statement of the chief cleaner, Mr. Arthur
Holcomb, three days ago in the Press, that he had been in the habit
at the Museum, under all of the last four Directors, of cleaning all of
the marbles with a "blunt copper tool" and that he started on the Elgin
Marbles about two years ago and used this tool "Copper is softer than
stone,*' he says. The absurdity of "the softer than marble theory" is
manifest. Has Sir George never heard of the bronze toe of the statue
of St. Peter in Rome kissed away by the worshipers' soft lips?
BRITISH MUSEUM AND SCULPTURE 173
"Putting me in my place" seems to be of greater importance to the
Museum officials than the proper care of the Greek Marbles.
The whole thing boils down not to an academic discussion on clean
ing and patination, but to the grave question as to whether the Elgin
Marbles and the other Greek Marbles are to be kept intact, or to be in
jeopardy of being periodically treated, and perhaps, in the end, being
permanently ruined by the Museum officials, through their lack of
sculptural science.
The public is dissatisfied with the present state of affairs, and clearly
uneasy about the present condition of the Elgin Marbles, and must
consider the answer for the Treasury in Parliament by Captain Crook-
shank to a question about them, as both equivocal and misleading. It is
an admission of damage, with an attempt to minimize the responsibility
of the Trustees of the British Museum.
Faithfully yours,
JACOB EPSTEIN
Sir George Hill again answered my letter, writing to the Times
on May 25, 1939, as follows:
SIR,
I have no wish to continue with Mr. Epstein a correspondence which
appears to be taking a personal turn, and I should be the last to wish to
"put him in his place," as to which we have all of us made up our minds
by this rime.
But I repeat that the only method of cleaning the Marbles authorised
by the Trustees was and is washing with soap and water. It would be
valuable to know what exactly were the methods which Mr. Epstein
says he saw used to his horror, and whether they were being applied to
marble or to plaster.
I must admit Mr. Epstein's correction as to the length of the period
during which Demeter wore her false nose; I will not therefore quarrel
with his assumption that there is not much difference in the length of
our familiarity with the Marbles (to be exact it is a matter of twenty
years). We must, I fear, agree to differ on his statement that the head
was "scraped" in 1921.
The public may well feel uneasy, owing to the agitation which, as
Mr. Epstein's own experience will remind Mm, can be only too easily
174 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
worked up artificially. But how far they can trust those who seek to
instruct them in the public Press may be inferred from the fact that
they have been asked (though not, of course, by Mr. Epstein) to be
lieve that the group of "Cecrops and His Daughter" has been a victim
of such drastic "cleaning" that it now seems "little better than with
ered stone." Since the original is still in its place on the Parthenon and
it is represented in the British Museum only by a plaster cast, it is
hardly reasonable to hold the Trustees responsible for its present con
dition.
It has come to such a pass that I am looked at askance if I enter
the Museum where the antiquities are gathered. Naturally, as
sculpture has been my lifework, I take more than a casual interest
in it; and to see the great works maltreated must call for protest.
The overcrowding and bad showmanship of the ethnographical
collections has been a long-standing point of difference with the
Museum and myself; but one excuse or another has been given
for this state of affairs, and nothing is done for year after year.
In this connection, and to prove how little the officials at a museum
may know about their own subject, I give the incident of a
Sumerian statue I own. A friend of mine, very much interested
in this statue, said that he would Uke to bring along the head of the
Sumerian department to see it. Coining to my studio, this gentle
man immediately on entering the room, with hardly a glance, de
clared the statue not Sumerian. On asking him his reasons for this
view, he answered that the position of the hands and feet were
wrong. This astonished me, as the hands and feet were exactly
in the position of all Godeas of that period. I pointed this out to
my expert, and he then determined evidently to put me in my
place, and declared the statue a forgery.
So much for Museum experts. Should you find some work, a
masterpiece perhaps of ancient art, and let it be known to the
Museum, even before they see it they will declare it to be a fake.
Their lack of enterprise is equaled only by their snobbishness, and
one would imagine from their attitude that they had created the
works. They show them off as if they were their private property.
BRITISH MUSEUM AND SCULPTURE 175
The two beautiful works now in the Boston Museum, the Chios
Head, and the other half of the Venus Throne in Rome (Terme
Museum) were both in England about 1907, and were offered
to the British Museum by Mr. John Marshall and Mr. Warren,
who invited the Museum officials down to see them about an hour's
journey from London. The officials replied that they would look
at them if the works were brought to them. Boston got there
first, of course.
The war has come and naturally will stave off any exhibition
and consideration of the Elgin Marbles for some time to come-
perhaps years. The last I heard was from a Greek antiquaire who
had seen them and found that the Museum technicians were at
tempting to repaint the Marbles in their original colors!
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Journalists and the Jew.
Dog Eats Dog
A WORD or two about the journalists and critics might not be
amiss, as I have had more than enough of both.
I have rarely had a visit from newspapermen or women that did
not cause me chagrin and annoyance. The woman journalist is the
worst. She will telephone a pleading request to be allowed to come
and see and write about sculpture. She arrives—usually a badly
educated woman with a provincial accent, evidently the office
girl promoted by favor— and, concealing her intentions, she spends
her time in observations, asking questions that are beside the point,
and taking only mental notes of one's appearance, age, clothing,
and surroundings. Then, when she leaves, she rehashes her acid
observations, merely personalities with no understanding of any
thing but gossip, and dishes this mixture up in the papers the fol
lowing morning. With these false pretenses of interest in sculpture
she decides she has got a "good gossipy story." The old-time
journalist who wrote down what you said in shorthand has long
ago gone out, unfortunately; and only a kind of "Tom the Peeper"
is sent out to get a good "peppy" story. I have sometimes taxed
the journalists with this disregard of what was actually said to them
by me, and I was told confidently that they were sorry, but that
their orders were to get an impression, "never mind what the
blighter says."
Moreover, as the journalist is usually totally incapable of com-
176
JOURNALISTS AND THE JEW 177
prehending or taking in what you have really said, your words
are translated into a journalese account that has entirely changed
their real meaning, and you read some ridiculous, garbled jargon
the next day, which is supposed to have been said by you, and goes
under your name. Art critics, of course, never want to know what
an artist thinks. They know what they want to think. As they
are today, very often, practising artists themselves, or well-to-do
amateurs, there is the element of rivalry and jealousy to reckon
with. If I seem to be flogging a dead donkey, it is because I have
all my life suffered from these gentry. One fondly imagines that
they will die off. They do sometimes, but where they fell out and
disappeared, I have found new spawn rising up from the same
muddy depths the old ones were bred in, with the same horrid
characteristics, jealousy, carping, biting, and snarling, and always
the hatred that attempts to belittle works whose superiority makes
their own failures seem worse.
I have found them in London. When I went to New York they
were there, and they exist in Paris, and in all capitals. Once when I
was with Modigliani, he was greeted by two chic young gentlemen.
I asked who they were, he answered, "Snobs d'art" He always
hit the nail right on the head. "We working artists," he said, "suffer
from les snobs d*art"
ANTI-SEMITISM
In the New Age appeared the following anti-Semitic article. If
one refers to the date, February 1924, it will be seen that hatred
of, and propaganda against, the Jews in art is of no recent growth.
I, for the life of me, cannot see why my bronzes in this exhibition
were peculiarly Jewish, any more than the works of Rembrandt,
and he is certainly not condemned for his Jewish subject matter—
except by the Nazis, of course. I remember that Modigliani was
intensely proud of his Jewish origin, and would contend with
absurd vehemence that Rembrandt was Jewish. He gave as his
reason that Rembrandt must have been Jewish on account of his
profound humanity. This review in the New Age where even
i78 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
the child studies of Peggy-Jean "are touched with horror," Aryan-
ism has run amok. This article, so venomous, so vile, was signed
with a pseudonym-Rusticus-who I was told was a Yugoslav
who had some vague mission in England, and gathered to himself
disciples for I know not what purpose. I print this Yugoslav piece
of Aryanism for what it is worth. I will add that since the growth
of Nazism and Fascism, both Italian and English, I have been
favored by articles in Der Sturmer, and similar periodicals in Ger
many and Austria; not to speak of attacks in the Fascist Press of
England, and the painting of the Hudson Memorial in Hyde Park
with swastikas. When I was invited to show at the Venice Biennial
by the Italian Government, receiving a personal invitation from
Count Volpi, my works on arrival at the British Pavilion were
held up, as Mussolini in imitation of Hitler had brought in his
Aryan decrees; but the twenty-two works were nevertheless
eventually shown, owing to the strong representations made by
the British Committee.
The New Age, February 14, 1924
By Rusticm
"There is no race in the world more enigmatic, more fatal, and
therefore more interesting than the Jews."— Dr. Oscar Levy.
On leaving the exhibition we remarked to the attendant that a world
peopled by such inhabitants as the artist depicted would be a night
mare. "But different peoples have different ideas of art," was the reply.
"For instance, you might not like Chinese art, but still it is art."
He apparently recognized that Epstein was not of the Aryan race,
for this significant fact burns itself on the consciousness of every Euro
pean who enters that room. Surrounded by Epstein's sculptures, the
Aryan is in face of an alien genius.
Puzzled, vaguely uneasy, you wander round closely inspecting each
head in turn. Wonderfully molded, they are the work of a genius.
They grip you. They will not let you go. But a sickening disgust
gradually conquers you. The intensity of repulsion aroused by them
JOURNALISTS AND THE JEW 179
cannot be explained merely on the ground of their Semitic cast— their
high cheek bones, their half-shut eyes, their prominent noses and their
full open lips. There is something more. They are instinct with evil.
On closer analysis, it is found that there is a wide gulf between the
men and women represented by Epstein. The women appear to be of
a lower race. They are types without individuality. Full of primitive
sensuality and suffering, his women are like animals— coarse, heavy and
anguished. The intellectual development of the forehead is overbal
anced by the heavy jaw and sensual mouth. The spirituality, which is
the distinguishing characteristic of the best types of Aryan women, is
unrepresented. So detestable has Epstein found the Aryan type that we
turn from his insipid frigid creatures, "An English Girl" and "Selina"
with distaste. At least his Semitic creations are full of vitality and
power.
Mr. Orage contended that the Jew forms a link between the black
and white races. This theory would explain how Epstein could so
sympathetically depict a young Senegalese girl. Although she possesses
the usual heavy features of the negress, the sculptor has endowed her
with a gentle smile which makes us feel the human predominates over
the animal.
The men's heads are highly individualized. But they represent the
power of intellect divorced from character. Here is old Pinager with
knotted hands, terribly alive in spite of his amusing attitude.
Dr. Adolph S. Oko, with intellectual head and cold, sneering, irre
sistible smile; the Duke of Marlborough cased in aristocratic pride; the
Napoleonic study of a man; and the marvelously vivid head of R. B.
Cunninghame-Graham. Into these sculptures Epstein has poured his
genius. But they are incarnations of evil.
We recall the pose and balance of the Greek gods and feel that we
are surrounded in their stead by Circean beasts. Where is man's power
to erect himself above himself? How loathsome is the species when
deprived of nobility and dignity! Even the charming studies of "Peggy-
Jean," the baby laughing, grave, asleep, are touched with horror when
we contemplate the adults by whom she is surrounded and whom she
will grow up to resemble.
It is significant that Jacob Epstein should choose to display his un
doubted genius in the portrayal of such savage types. His models, ac-
i8o LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
cording to the photographs published in the daily Press, are ordinary
good-looking people. But he has read into them certain bestial char
acteristics. Why has he done so?
We believe that in the artistic genius the soul of the race speaks. The
individual is here the instrument impelled by a power far greater than
himself. And we believe that in his gallery of sculptures, Jacob Epstein
has expressed the subconscious racial Hebraic life— utterly and entirely
alien to the Aryan life which reached its artistic apotheosis in Greek
sculpture, and Christian painting and poetry.
In the Grecian marbles, the human spirit sought expression for the
ideal. Before even their mutilated remains we are uplifted and chastened
—we glimpse Olympia beyond and above our petty selves and share
the larger life of common aspiration. But before Epstein's works we
are humiliated and cast down. It seems scarcely worth while to belong
to such a bestialized or evil humanity. He narrows us down to tribal
conceptions— to animal women serving the lust of their patriarchal
owners, cunning and cruel. The centuries are obliterated. European
civilisation has vanished. Balance, self-poise, control, proportion— the
gifts of ages— have been swept away. He transports us anew to the twi
light of early Jewry, where power is the motive force of man, and
woman is but an instrument of sensuality.
This astonishing tirade might have been written in the Germany
of today. I remember when in New York one evening, at a party
to which a friend had taken me, I met the genial Pascin, very de
pressed, and recall with what pleasure he greeted me. At that time
in New York he was attacked by anti-Semitic art critics, and as
he had had great popularity there this weighed upon him. Shortly
after that he committed suicide in Paris. The average unfavorable
criticism of my sculpture or drawings I had never put down to
a|iti-Semitism, and I have never joined in all-Jewish exhibitions of
art. Artists are of all races and climes, and to band together in racial
groups is ridiculous. I am most often annoyed rather than flattered
to be told that I am the best or foremost Jewish artist. Surely to be
an. artist is enough. Who thinks of whether Memihin or Huberman
are Jewish when you hear them playing the violin? Or whether
THE GIRL FROM SENEGAL
DOG EATS DOG 181
Einstein is Semitic in science? Einstein said to me when I worked
from him, that it was only the Nazis who had made him conscious
of his Jewish origin. The pernicious racialism in art should be
forever banished.
DOG EATS DOG
A new and strange phenomenon has of late years come into
being: the artist turns critic and publicist. At one time it would not
have been considered "professional conduct" for an artist to express
publicly his opinion concerning another artist, at any rate a deroga
tory opinion. That would have been considered at least ungentle-
manly. But now, under the excuse that he has a public service
to perform, the artist vents in print his spite, jealousy, and rage
at his fellow artist. To begin with, he obtains a post as contributor
to a journal and then in his "capacity as publicist" proceeds to
snarl at his fellow artists, demolish as far as he can their reputation,
and lay down the law. This, of course, gives this particular type
the reputation for cleverness and judgment which the merely
working artist can never obtain. In time, the voluble one is elected
to committees, trusteeships, and may even become the curator
of a gallery. A good example of this type of critic-artist is fur
nished in the following by a man who wrote, lectured, painted,
and even sculptured. A complete failure in the practice of art, an
imitator of whatever style was fashionable in Paris, and an enemy
of every artist that loomed larger than himself and his circle, his
venom was poured out in cleverly written articles for the "intel
lectual" weeklies. Naturally I have suffered from this pest. In
the course of a long article on one of my exhibitions of sculpture,
he starts off in this manner:
Such then being the main uses of sculpture, most of us naturally look
upon it as entirely remote from any personal emotion or interest other
than that general all-pervading feeling of boredom with which it is so
thoroughly imbued. We are brought up to a pious belief that sculpture
is an altogether noble and reputable affair. We know the names of the
i8z LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
great sculptors of all ages, and yet sculpture has always bored us— till
now— and now comes Mr. Epstein. As we passed round the Leicester
Gallery where his work has been on exhibition, each bronze head gave
us a new and distinct sensation, a thrill of wonder, surprise, recognition,
and, as a result of so pleasant a shock, admiration and gratitude. What
miraculous gift was this which could make bronze reveal to us definite,
singular, vivid human beings— human beings more definite, more em
phatically personal, more incisive in the accent of their individuality,
more invasive, at a first glance, of our own consciousness than the in
dividuals of actual life?
Mr. Epstein started from the first with remarkable gifts, but in his
early work he was an experimentalist in styles.
Now at last he found himself; he has developed a method and a
manner of seeing which look as though they were definitive. One
imagines that he can go on indefinitely along these lines, increasing the
intimacy of his reading of character, the psychological intensity of the
mood, the incisiveness and brio of the execution. He is surely to be con
gratulated on having found his own indisputably original and unique
artistic personality. There is no doubt about it; it sticks out authenti
cally from all the works, however varied the subjects may be. How
ever completely he seems to abandon himself to the personality he is
interpreting, it is Epstein's personality that really startles, interests, and
intrigues us. That is the way of the great masters, or at least of most
of them; and indeed, when we realize the astonishing assurance, the
indisputable completeness and efficacy of these works, the brilliant
resourcefulness and certainty of the technique, we must call Epstein
a master. His technical resourcefulness is extraordinary. Decidedly
Mr. Epstein is a master.
Reading this and wondering what would come next, as I knew
this gentleman to be no admirer of mine, I went further and came
upon this really astonishing bit*
But a master of what? murmurs a still small voice within me which
all the turbulence and impressiveness of these works does not entirely
silence. A master of what? Of the craft of sculpture, undoubtedly; of
vigorous characterisation, certainly after a fashion, but even here I
should have to make reservations. Even if we are to regard sculpture
DOG EATS DOG 183
as a peculiarly effective form of representation— more than making up
for the lack of colour by the palpability of its form— even so, one can
imagine a finer, more penetrating, less clamant kind of interpretation
of character. One might tire, perhaps, of the element not only of cari
cature—since all interpretation of character partakes of the nature of
caricature— but of its direction. One might soon long for something
which, even at the cost of being less immediately impressive, wooed
one to a gentler, more intimate contemplation— something in which the
finer shades were not so immediately blotted out by the big sweep of
the most striking, first-seen peculiarities. One would prefer to live with
something less vehement in its attack, rather more persuasive.
But this digression has not stopped the inner voice. It persists: Is he
a master of sculpture? And, alas! I am bound to say to the best of my
belief, No. If I examine my own sensations and emotions, I am bound
to confess that they seem to be of quite a different nature when I look
at good sculpture from what I feel in front of Mr. Epstein's bronzes.
There is an undoubted pleasure in seeing any work accomplished with
such confidence and assurance, such certainty and precision of touch;
there is a powerful stimulus in the presence of such vividly dramatized
personalities, but the peculiar emotions which great sculpture gives
seem to me quite different. They come from the recognition of in
evitable harmonic sequences of planes of a complete equilibrium estab
lished through the interplay of diverse movements and a perfect
subordination of surface and handling to the full apprehension of
these and similar qualities. It may be, of course, that I am so carried
away, so disturbed if you like, by all those other qualities of drama
and actuality which Mr. Epstein's work displays that I cannot feel this
purely formal stimulus to the imagination which is what I seek for in
sculpture. But there is the fact as I see it. These busts are for me bril
liant but rather crude representations in the round. If these are sculp
ture, then I want another word for what M. Maillol and Mr. Dobson
practise, let alone Luca della Robbia and the Sumerians.
Fortunately for Mr. Epstein, there are a great many people whose
imaginations are excited by really capable dramatic representation, and
there are very few people who happen to like sculpture in my sense.
The majority are quite right to acclaim him as a master, since the gift
necessary for such work is a very rare one agd he has used it and
1 84 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
developed it pertinaciously, and since it does give genuine pleasure. It
is a triumphant expression of genuine feelings about people's character
as expressed in their features, and if it does not evince any peculiar and
exhilarating sense of formal harmony, so much the worse for the few
people who happen to have a passion of such an odd kind.
So that the flattering edifice built up in the beginning is torn
down, and this mass of self-contradictions passes as a more than
fair criticism of the living sculptor, even pretending to humility
which, accompanied by a sly, cunning smile, clearly says, "How
cleverly I have demolished him."
Another writer of this same kind, a painter, after my "Genesis"
had been shown, let himself go on what he was pleased to call a
"psychological post-mortem." Plunging into the middle of a ter
ribly long article he began with this:
Of the correspondents who wrote to the Morning Post, the bright
mind which thought that if Mr. Epstein would "take a ruck-sack and
tramp through Skye in June—or Cumberland in October— he would
return . . . and do a really great work" seemed to have most vision;
although the suggestion that "Genesis" must bring all men to realise
the beauty of their own women-folk struck me as ingenious. But all
this does not carry me much further on my road. The world is cov
ered with quite humourless people, dolts are not rare. But artists like
Epstein are rare. A critic remarked at the time of the exhibition that
Epstein was the only artist among us today who still has the power to
shock. That is probably true, but what is more to the point is that
Epstein is the only artist among us who wants to shock. His work is
definitely epatant. The principal subjects of his exhibitions are in
variably controversial. But it is seldom an aesthetic controversy which
they excite. Faced with such a creation as "Genesis," critics and purists
are apt to stand a little to one side, if they are not positively elbowed
out of the way or trodden under foot.
It must be admitted that far more is written by the journalist than
by the critic upon what are technically called the important sculptures
of Epstein. But then there is so much for the journ!alist to write about.
DOG EATS DOG 185
Epstein is that unusual being among- modern artists, a sculptor who is
not content with creating Jform. For Mm, pure sculpture would seem to
be not enough. A great idea is necessary, not only an ideal form, but a
philosophical idea. When Dobson exhibits a sculpture of a kneeling
woman under the title of "Truth" there is no apparent reason why it
could not have been called simply "Kneeling Woman" except for the
traditional Academy principle of giving a "work" a good name and
hanging it. But if Epstein calls a piece of sculpture "Genesis" it is
quite obvious that "Genesis" has been in his mind from the first blow
of the chisel. Here is the expression of a thought hardly realised within
the limits of art, but seeming in some way to have other ambitions.
Just what those ambitions are I have never been able to decide, but I
feel that one at least is to shock, to challenge, even to hurt the minds
of men.
All this from an unsuccessful artist was enough to make one's
blood boil, and I remember that I answered somewhat indignantly.
The critic then started to whine and claimed that I had hit him
below the belt. A third scribbler, this time a sculptor, wrote in a
Catholic propaganda journal, thus: (I begin also in the middle
of the article as to quote it in its entirety would be boring.) To
give a notion of his pert style, he starts off with:
"A thing well made," what pregnant words! Let us take them in
order. A thing: this is the essence of the matter. Here we are con
fronted by the intellect and the object of the intelligence is Truth. A
thing-what thing? That is the point. Is the thing really there, and, if
so, is it what it purports to be? A kettle, a statue— what are such things?
Let the philosopher answer, but let the artist know. And, in moments
of doubt, let the artist think a bit
We ask again: a kettle, a statue— what are such things? If you knew
precisely what a kettle is, you wouldn't be put off with the wretched
make-shifts they give you for sixpence-ha'penny in the shops. If you
knew precisely what a statue is, you wouldn't criticise the maker of
such things from twenty different contradictory points of view at
once.
i86 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
When he actually gets to grips with the subject (in this case
the Hudson Memorial) he comes out with this fine mouthful:
All the controversy, then, about the Hudson Memorial, and what
not, is so much fiddling while we leave the main business unremedied.
The Hudson Memorial is what one would expect it to be. Shall I have
the effrontery to add another criticism to the already too many? I say
it is what one would expect it to be, considering how it was done.
Consider. You have a writer—peculiar sort of writer, wrote some
marvellous but very odd romances and some books of observation on
Nature— good books, very, no one doubts that. But he's not exactly a
popular hero— most people won't have heard of him before they read
about his monument and few will read his books even then. There is
a committee to decide about the monument— very mixed committee,
mixed in mind. There's no harm in a mixed committee if the mixing is
merely due to the variety of trades or professions followed by its
members (one king, one bishop, one hair-dresser, one journalist . . . but
all of one faith) but there's every harm if the mixing is due to the
variety of misbeliefs held by its members (one agnostic, one C. of E.,
one Jew but all of middle class.) What can such a committee agree
about but what the most forceful "high-brow" among them can per
suade?
What happens next? There's an architect. Oh, my Lord! What's an
architect for? Why, to defend his customers from the rapacity of the
commercial building contractor and to supply what such a person is
naturally somewhat lacking in, a sense of beauty in design. Well, they
choose an architect— a very good architect, very good choice— no more
Albert Memorials in Hyde Park— back number that! Strong silent
men's turn. And there's a sculptor— must have sculpture. ("I do love
Sculpture; it has such beautiful lines." Lady's very own words— truth! )
So they choose a sculptor. Oh, my . . . ! What shall I say about Epstein?
Well, Epstein is a very gifted man and has done some monstrous fine
portraits, but stone-carving doesn't happen to be what he's best at—
the stuff isn't flexible enough for him; he ca^'t control it as he can clay.
Result unfair to Epstein— unfair to architect, but committee gets what
it deserves— a mix-up. Then there's the building contractor— he's never
been no pal of mine, so I can say what I like and I can tell him that he
DOG EATS DOG 187
provided some jolly rotten stone for the letter cutter to work on, and
he ought to be told. For the rest, his work is what you'd expect— dull,
mechanical, lifeless— making the sculpture look as though Epstein had
gnawed it with his teeth.
How's that for doggerel to cover up malice let loose?
CHAPTER TWENTY
/ Listen to Music
WE crowd into the hall to listen to Beethoven's Mass in D as
in other periods worshipers devoutly made their way into
cathedrals to attend Holy Mass. With equal piety we crowd the
seats of the tawdry concert hall, an expectant audience, the orches
tra, and tier on tier, the chorus. Toscanini appears, a small man full
of nervous energy, urging himself forward without any self-
consciousness, as if intent on some very particular business. He
mounts the rostrum and surveys his orchestra and battalions of
singers, then in the hush raises his hands and begins the orchestral
introduction. Powerful massive chords lead to the majestic choral
outburst of the "Kyrie Eleison" and then on to the triumphant
"Gloria in Excelsis Deo" With dramatic suddenness comes the
contrasting "Et in Terra Pax" The music now is hushed and filled
with divine peace. Soon to the words "Pater omnipotens" there
comes the magnificent outburst of chorus with orchestra and organ.
The slow prayer, "Qui tollis peccata mundi" rising and falling,
male and female voices alternating, pleading and supplicating, die
mysteriously away. Then distant drums announcing the "Quoniam
tu Solus Sanctus" growing in glory ending with the majestic fugue.
I watched the conductor, who seems now to be possessed with
dynamic energy and controls the music like plastic material. A
wonderful sculptor, I think, molding and conjuring the material
in its varied and intricate shapes, lengthening out, scooping with
tremendous curves, evening out great planes, broad sides of sound,
188
I LISTEN TO MUSIC 189
compelling the advance and retreat with beckonings of the left
hand, his expression determined, with dark eyes glowing with the
profound emotion of the work. The Credo begins, a song of divine
praise, until the sudden change of key and mood with the words
"descended from heaven." The hushed mystery of the section
"Et Incctrnatus E$t" is sung by the solo quartet. The throbbing pas
sionate statement of the tenor declaims "Et homo factus est" rising
to a culminating ecstasy. The solemn tragedy of the Crucifixion,
the dramatic resurrection, the end with the great fugue "Et Vitam
Venturis The beautiful Sanctus, then a long pause— "Osanna in
Excelsis" The Praeludiwn and the Eenedictus follow. The "Agnus
Dei" begins with a solemn prayer from the bass voice, answered
by a chorus of male voices; and this final movement is pierced
through and through by a poignant female cry, as if it were the
voice of Eve, as in Michelangelo's "Last Judgment," where Eve
lifts her hands to the enthroned figure, pleading for her children.
Throughout the work I am reminded of those great masses in the
"Last Judgment" groups, clusters of figures, now clear, now shad
owy, a surging humanity lifting its hands in supplication with
wailing cries amidst trumpets of doom. This dramatic agony com
pressed into sound tears the very heart out of the body. The com
monplace surroundings disappear; we are whirled into space by
an almost physical assault upon our emotions, and are left helpless,
exhausted by this great musical experience. The work comes to a
close with humanity's prayer for peace rising triumphant above
the sullen retreating drums. The conductor leans back, holding
on to the rail as if to save himself from falling; his dark eyes are
sunk into his pale, drawn face. We turn from the hall and pour
into the humdrum streets of a London Sunday afternoon.
BEETHOVEN'S LAST QUARTETS
In these quartets one witnesses a terrible struggle of the deaf man
with fate itself. This music is the expression of one who wills him
self beyond life and death and attains to a spirit world. He seems
to choose the quartet form on account of its peculiar suitability
i9o LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
for intimate expression, a last statement of personal thought and
philosophy. How urgently the strings speak to us; how lucidly
they sing! The idea of flight from a mortal to an immortal world
is most completely summed up in Opus 127 in E flat major. The
opening statement of heroic faith quickly dissolves into wistful
melancholy, which turns in the Adagio movement to prof oundest
mourning. With incredible sweetness the music seems to brood
over lost human joys. At times the sorrow is lightened by reminis
cent gaiety. With the Scherzo the spirit has escaped from our
world of human experience and is tossed hither and thither, fugi
tive and despairing. The scattered fragments of melody seem to be
waiting for the master will to weld them together before the spirit
can take flight and soar into its kingdom of musical ecstasy and
fulfillment. The Finale rushes inevitably to its end like a river
to the sea. The doubt and hesitation of the Presto are dispersed.
At one point the strings seem to transport us to a heavenly grove
of nightingales. All is resolved in mysterious and mystical joy.
In the B flat major quartet, Opus 130, the first movement ex
presses the heartbroken utterance of a mind completely isolated
from the world. The melancholy is unrelieved. The Presto has a
ghoulish quality despite its vigor. At one point the violins wail
with macabre gaiety. This mocking dance is like that scene in the
Dybbuk played by the Habima where the bride as if in a trance
is forced to dance with insane and deformed beggars. The Andante
opens with a sorrowful statement by the violins. The grim dance is
over, but the lonely soul is still tormented by the mocking spirits
of doubt and despair, and the main theme pleads continuously for
deliverance. Abruptly the Allegro brings an entire change of move
ment. Beethoven seems to look back to past happiness, and the
music is gracious with a wistful gaiety. The famous Cavatina is
described by Beethoven when he said, "Never did music of mine
make so deep an impression on me; even the remembrance of the
emotion it aroused always costs me a tear." This is the Gethsemane
of music, the tragic and shadowy hour before the end. In this
wonderful melodious section the profound sorrow seems to bring
M
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I LISTEN TO MUSIC 191
its own noble consolation. It does not prepare us for the harrowing
and nervous intensity of the Grosse Fugue, which is the actual
finale of this quartet. This is probably the most tortured music
ever written; and the strictness of the fugal form seems deliberately
chosen to enhance the despair and struggle it expresses. The final
summing up can be put in Beethoven's own words, "I will seize
Fate by the throat. It shall never wholly overcome me." *
In the C sharp minor quartet, Opus 131, the composer develops
the quartet forms in the most original way. The seven sections are
as closely related as a sonnet sequence, and one feels conscious
throughout this work of the musician's delight in his own consum
mate handling of the form, the ever-gushing spring of new ideas
and musical invention. The opening fugue develops with an im
pelling intensity. One feels it should be headed "De Profimdid
Clamavi" so like is it to a sorrowful prayer filled at once with
despair and faith. An irrepressible liveliness inspires the next move
ment, which leads to the beautifully lyrical variations, and so
straight on to an exuberant Presto with its changing rhythms and
insistently recurring opening theme. The ninth section seems to
be a lyrical counterpoint of the prayerlike spirit of the opening,
which suddenly gives way to the impetus of the Finale filled with
challenge and assertion.
The longest of the five quartets is in A minor, Opus 132. The
hushed introduction seems to prepare us for a kingdom not of this
* The later quartets could be compared to the later works of Rembrandt. When
abandoning the tight forms of the earlier and middle period, Rembrandt became
more profound and expressive, even more dramatic in content, as in the etching
of the three crosses, when from the first state he proceeds to blot out and
eliminate until in the third state only the great central figure with a terrible
downpouring shaft of light enhancing it is left. All else recedes into a tragic
abyss of gloom. Or a parallel could be even more aptly drawn between these
last quartets and the last works of Donatello; the small bronze bas-relief at
South Kensington of the "Pieta" filled from end to end with a passionate grief,
and the reliefs on the pulpits of San Lorenzo, where every scene depicted is
filled with a passionate fury. In these powerful -reliefs Donatello and Beethoven
are akin, alike in the impetuous movement, the wild fury and harsh demoniacal
emotions depicted.
r92 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
world. The first movement alternates between resolution to attain
that state and a yearning regret for lost joys. What a contradiction
between form and content fills the next section, the movement of
which is lively and dancing but permeated with melancholy like
a spirit dancing in fog-bound desolation "without a habitation or
a name"! On this shadow world the "Heilige Dankgesang" dawns
like a transfiguration, and the liberated spirit contemplates and
communes with the Divine being. Then, as if for respite, knowing
the human spirit cannot dwell forever on such heights, Beethoven
almost playfully introduces a little movement of childlike gaiety.
A poignant recitative with the urgency of a human voice takes
us straight into the Finale, which rushes exultantly to its trium
phant end.
The last quartet, in F major, Opus 135, is shorter than the pre
ceding ones, and it seems a cursory but complete summing up
of the various states of mind previously dwelt upon. The first
movement is full of wistful regret, with short phrases alternating
between doubt and resolution. The Vivace is yet another of the
trancelike spirit dances, approaching, receding, at some points
pausing breathlessly, then back to the enforced and mocking dance.
It is almost as if, looking back at life, Beethoven saw humanity
whirling round in circles, fearful of stopping lest death overtake
them, but achieving nothing and making no progress. Then comes
one of the most beautiful of all the slow movements, which seems
clearly to say, "O sorrow, I have lived and wrestled with you so
long, and suddenly seeing the beauty of your face, I embrace you."
But it was not in Beethoven's nature to end on a note of resigna
tion. Summoning his forces, he seems to challenge his own spirit
with a searching, questioning phrase repeated several times, rising
to a shrill intensity, then fading away. The answer comes bravely
enough with a somewhat forced resolution, repeated with almost
harsh aggression. Melancholy creeps back, and the spirit sinks to
the depths, only to be challenged again by the repeated question.
The final answer is given first with an eerie gaiety by the high
strings over pizzicato accompaniment, and then with the last
I LISTEN TO MUSIC 193
summoning up of triumphant resolution by the whole quartet.
How can one write of the later quartets of Beethoven without
seeming to gild fine gold? Yet to leave unsaid what I owe to listen
ing to these works would leave unacknowledged a great debt of
gratitude. There is nothing else in all the wide realm of art that
one can quite compare with these works. With awe one listens
to the great Masses of Bach and Beethoven, and the music of
Palestrina is like heaven's own choirs. Mozart's miraculous works
we love and treasure. But here in these quartets, Beethoven seems
to have written for himself alone. They are hardly meant to have
listeners. They are like a soliloquy of one who, having experienced
all sorrow, communes with his own soul in a final and withdrawn
unique language. In no confessional has so heartbroken an utter
ance taken place, no prisoner in the condemned cell felt a reality
more poignant; and this confession is communicated to us with a
vividness and clarity, a mastery of form, which leaves one astounded
that a human being could achieve, in affliction and despair, work
of this order.*
When showing my larger works, I have often wished that for
once only a quartet would play while the work was shown, or even
a recording of the great B minor Mass by Bach, or Beethoven's
in D major. The lack of opportunity, and doubt as to how this
would be received, have prevented me from carrying this out.
And yet I know that this combination of music and sculpture
would be a wonderful experience.
* The same ironic commentary on life is shown in Rembrandt's last portrait
with its tortured and almost maniacal laugh.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Position of the Artist
Sculptors of Today
FOR those artists who feel the urge to creative work, the posi
tion today is hazardous and beset with difficulties.
We imagine that we have at last emerged into a period of en
lightenment. That no longer can a Cezanne be misunderstood and
neglected; nor a Van Gogh or a Modigliani be unable to earn a
living during their lifetime. This is far from true. The creative
artist of today is in exactly the same position as his predecessors.
He has against him a formidable array of enemy forces, who at
tack him directly and obliquely. To start with, those who handle
his work, the dealers. They are not content to be mere dealers.
They wish to be, and often are, the dictators of the artist's pro
duction. They admonish the artist as to what the public will like
or dislike, and they can also keep the artist in poverty, so that
he is easier to control. The commonest grouse of the dealer is that
the artist is a self-willed person who does not know on which side
his bread is buttered. I myself have often been asked to furnish
the dealer with what he considers the most salable of all work, the
small female nude, which can ornament a mantelpiece or a smoking-
room table. I have never succumbed to this demand, and it has even
set me against this form of sculpture. The really popular works of
Maillol are those little nudes, of which I have seen a hundred copies
at one time cast by a dealer in Paris, all ready for the market.
A landscape artist I know, whose spring and summer landscapes
THE POSITION OF THE ARTIST 195
sold well, was advised by his dealers to go on doing spring and
summer landscapes, and they looked with disfavor on his attempts
to paint autumn and winter landscapes. Also the subjects which the
dealer finds tragic or sinister, he often thinks unsuitable for the
public.
When I had done the series of drawings for Baudelaire's Les
Fleurs du Mai, to my astonishment the dealer so managed the card
of invitation that it read "Fleurs du Mai." Also, as the exhibition
was held in December, another dealer remarked jocosely of these
drawings, which were necessarily macabre in many cases, "Hardly
Christinas cards, eh?"
The dealer demands of newcomers 33 1-3 per cent of the price
of any work sold, and only artists with big reputations can reduce
this to 25 per cent. In Paris the conditions are even worse, where
50 per cent or even more is demanded from newcomers.
The art racket rarely is in favor of the artist. A favorite trick
is to take great care that the work does not sell. This can be
easily managed, as exhibitions must necessarily be in the hands
of the dealers. I once tried this out on a dealer, who had a work
of mine for sale sent in by the owner. She was then told that there
were no claimants for it. I had sent a friend who admired the work,
and who was genuinely interested in it. He could not get any in
formation as to the price by calling or writing. So far as any effort
was made to connect him with the object, he was as far off at the
end as at the beginning. Naturally the work fell into the dealer's
hands. It was my first carved work in marble, and he put a big
price on it. In Gauguin's letters he complains of a celebrated
dealer who handled his work while he was in the Marquesas, and
who kept on writing to him that there was no demand, or even
inquiry, about his paintings. Gauguin expresses a natural aston
ishment at this, and asks his friend to find out if his paintings
are really being shown at all. That this dealer had a great quantity
of Gauguin's work later, after his death, was altogether natural
and satisfactory to the dealer.
The majority of the dealers will not, of course, settle with the
i96 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
artists until they are paid. This seems fair; but as things are, dealers
often give very long credits for works sold, to please their clients,
and while they can afford this, the artist waits and waits, hoping
for payments.
There is a peculiar attitude about the purchasing of works of
art. I have heard an average collector say that he expected two
years' credit if he bought anything. This man probably never real
ized that he was keeping the artist waiting for two years.
The reader may be inclined to ask why artists do not band
together and run a shop for their own benefit. The answer to this
is the difficulty in reckoning with the human element in managers.
There is hardly any manager on earth who will not see where,
with artists to deal with, he can easily feather his own nest. Thus
the temptation to dishonesty is more than likely to overcome
him. I had a practical experience of this in a man who expressed
himself, when outside the business, as righteously indignant at the
extortions of the dealers in charging 25 per cent on prices for
artists. Partly on my persuasion, he entered on the calling him
self. He opened a gallery and I gave him an exhibition of drawings
to start with. In no time, alas, cupidity consumed him, and several
artists, including myself, had to sue him to recover some of the
money he had made out of us.
There is something in the art-dealing business, an element of
gambling which can convert an ordinary businessman into a poten
tial inmate of a jail, sooner than almost any other occupation. Deal
ers, as a rule, adopt toward the artist an attitude of benevolence
*such as the poorhouse inmate meets at the hand of the County
Council visitor or Charity Organization Inspector. He is just a
poor devil who would starve if not for them. Perhaps he would.
To bend one's energy to the creation of work, and to make one's
living at the same time, is beyond the power of the average artist.
It is said that Picasso and Matisse have succeeded in doing this.
One can only express one's astonishment and admiration for their
business acumen.
Today, of course, there is a large body of artists who have
THE POSITION OF THE ARTIST 197
incomes. These happy artists are amateurs who for the most part
take to abstract and surrealist art. That does not take up much
time, and leaves one free for that social intercourse so necessary
for the propagation of advanced ideas. Most of these moneyed
folk have never been to an art school in their lives and often began
their "careers" somewhat later than professional artists. Often
they have started by purchasing a work of one of the most known
"advanced" men, and from that to practice is of course easy.
Once when I spoke to one of the leaders of this movement, and
mentioned how easy it was to do the kind of stuff a certain artist
of the abstract persuasion was turning out, he exclaimed, "Oh,
that is just what that artist thinks. He says everyone should work
at art." Of course, there is no training, no drudgery, no learning of
a craft. How would that do for surgery, engineering, or any other
profession than art? It is so easy, evidently; if you have an idle
moment and do not know what to do with yourself, just take
to painting or a bit of sculpture. You can just as easily drop it
again. I once met an American doctor, a mental specialist, who
advised his wealthy patients to paint, and I saw some of their paint
ings which were done in the Van Gogh manner, evidently by weak-
minded people who had reproductions of Van Gogh placed in
front of them for imitation. Madness of Van Gogh— imbecility of
idle, wealthy persons! The two went together well, the doctor
thought.
On another occasion a shell-shocked young man told me that he
had been advised to take up sculpture. As if sculpture did not need
strong nerves. Sculpture is an exacting and difficult medium, and
I have known of sculptors giving it up after a time and taking to
painting . . . certainly less hard work, and less expensive. I cannot
assert here too strongly that sculpture is a science needing many years
of preparation and study, and requiring an exercise of the imag
ination equal to that needed in any form of creation, poetry, music,
or great drama; the same effort and sacrifice and lifetime of de
votion. The tided female sculptor is rampant in England, and in
America women have taken to sculpture with gusto. As one ex-
198 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
plained to me, they felt so "creative." Here is a subject for Freud,
and I expect he could easily have explained it.
The artist has not only the dealer to contend with. He has also
the art critic, art patron, and art director or keeper of galleries
and art institutions of all kinds. Take the art critic first. He is
often a journalist who has accidentally taken up the function of
critic of exhibitions, or an unsuccessful artist, one who found he
could make an easier living by writing than by painting. His
pen is dipped in gall and venom. He gets back at those artists who
have persevered and still keep on working. He has, of course,
an inside knowledge. He knows how to write as if he could
do the thing himself, and achieves sometimes a tremendous repu
tation as a "know-all in art," on just fine writing. There is now
a school of such critics in all countries. In the field of Old Masters,
they are the experts who command thousands of pounds a year
for their services to great dealers. With modern work in their
hands, their pens are also for sale to the dealers.
On one occasion when my friend Matthew Smith was holding
an exhibition, I remarked on one critic's praise, knowing that that
same critic had often written disparagingly of Matthew Smith's
work. I said, "How strange this new view is." The dealer merely
remarked that with regard to this critic they had "loaded the dice."
A critic to whom I had complained that he wrote diametrically
opposed articles in two different papers, said that he had to consider
the different publics he was writing for.
Another critic told me that he could be commissioned to write
an article on a piece of work of mine only on condition that it was
unfavorable to me.
In any other occupation or trade on earth this would be con
sidered libelous or damaging. Not so with the artist. Hit him and hit
him hard. If he shows the slightest sign of originality, close the
doors of your academies against him. Rob him. Drive him out
of his profession.
Taxation is another enemy of the artist which weighs on him.
He is taxed on his work, which is his principal, instead of on
THE POSITION OF THE ARTIST 199
"purely income." Sculptors work as it were in gold and cannot
get it all repaid. The cost of producing a work of sculpture is left
out of account when it comes to the price of even the smallest
work. If it is in clay, there is first the clay model to be made, and
then cast into plaster. Then the bronze casting, which is costly.
In stone, there is the material to be bought, and the carving takes
a long time. Yet artists are considered "lucky beggars." Perhaps
they are. They certainly are not wage slaves. In that they are
indeed "lucky" beggars.
The uncertainty in which artists live with regard to their incomes
makes them into Micawbers, who are always expecting something
to turn up. If they are accused of extravagance, this only argues
the inherent hopefulness in the artist's nature. The artist is the
world's scapegoat. He has a reputation for profligacy in living.
One critic wrote that Gauguin could not possibly make fine works
as he had had illegitimate children in Tahiti. Did not Stephen Crane
say that if an artist is seen just clinking a glass of beer, it was im
mediately called from the housetops, "Look at Jones, the artist.
What a drunkard!"
Was not Rembrandt a terrible drunkard? Look at his portraits
of himself. It is said that he has condemned himself out of his own
self-portraits alone. Degas said that to make a fine work of art
was similar to committing a crime. A cryptic saying from a master;
a saying with wide implications. Toulouse-Lautrec is an artist
with a reputation for debauchery. Yet look at his drawings and
paintings, and where do you see the results of debauchery? There
is nothing loose, careless, or feeble in them. The drawing is sensitive
and tense; the compositions are thought out, the work of a great
artist with acute observation. The legend of the debauched artist
is just a legend.
When it comes to portraits, sitters are as a rule filled with the
desire to be flattered, as they are by the photographer. I have some
times been compelled to ask a sitter why he chose me to do his
portrait. An old lady at the end of a series of sittings said: "And
I thought you were going to make me young and beautiful."
200 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
Of course, I had to reassure her about her beauty (but it was the
beauty of old age); as to the youth, "Ou sont les neiges tTantan?"
Children I love to do, but not at the command of their parents.
They likewise want to see them as angels with wings on, and
not just lovely and charming, or roguish and capricious.
Of an exhibition of portraits of my daughter Peggy-Jean, aged
two to four years of age, a well-known writer-critic said, "Even
the soul of a child is not safe in his hands," and another newspaper
man professed to discover that I had done a criminal child. When
I made an inquiry as to who could have written this filthy stuff,
and why, I was told that it was that newspaper's "crime expert."
Dealers, critics, patrons, artists— a host of enemies waiting for the
man of talent. They are entrenched in galleries, newspapers, and
journals, occupying important positions in the world of art. Ad
ministrators of funds, curators of public art galleries, experts of
all kinds living upon the activities of the artists.
Cultural propaganda has become important. More and more paid
positions for the parasites on art to occupy. If we ever had a
Minister of the Fine Arts, the post would go to a gentleman of
this kidney. No one would ever imagine a working artist fit for
such a responsible position— a position in a museum, say, a museum
of antiques such as the British Museum. My advocacy of an expert
at the British Museum was met with scorn. I was mad to suggest
such a thing. Gentlemen who have come from Oxford, having
written treatises on Greek sculpture or on Cezanne are pitched
into such well-paid positions and given titles of dignity; and more
often than not, as in the case of the Greek Marbles at the British
Museum, they do real damage to the works they are supposed to
look after. I do not say that a working artist would care for an
all-time job of this kind, but for the good of institutions such as the
British Museum or the Tate Gallery, working painters and sculp
tors are absolutely necessary on their boards. It is well known that
such a public fund as the Chantry Bequest was for years a per
quisite of the Royal Academy, and, until Dr. D. S. MacCoU called
attention to the scandal, no works except those of the Academy
THE POSITION OF THE ARTIST 201
artists were ever bought with it. Usually from other funds the
purchases for public collections are the works of friends of the
Committee, and have no connection with merit. The collections
of work in our provincial museums are a disgrace to the cities
they are in; wealthy corporations whose Aldermen, ignorant of
anything outside the city drains, form their Art Committees, and
judge what should be bought for the spiritual food of the people.
Usually a visit to the Royal Academy settles that, and the dump
ings of this miserable institution are everywhere. "If you do not
know an art, teach it."
At one time the Royal Academy thought they would thwart
their enemies by a policy of broad-mindedness; in fact, "take the
wind out of their critics' sails" by admitting new blood. Artists
who are considered unacademic, like Augustus John, Walter
Sickert, and Stanley Spencer, were elected. These artists, individu
alists with no academic inclinations, found themselves there on
sufferance, and in a very short time had their eyes opened as to
where they really stood.
Sickert resigned ostensibly on my account.
John resigned on account of the rejection of a painting by
Wyndham Lewis, and Stanley Spencer found, one fine day, that
his pictures were rejected by the hanging committee, although
he had a perfect right to their exhibition.
This institution enjoys, of course, state support and royal pa
tronage. Its annual banquet is graced by every commercial and
political and legal luminary in this land. Criticism is savagely re
sented, and to be hung in the Royal Academy is supposed to be
the hallmark of achievement. I went once to the Royal Academy;
since then it has not been necessary to go again, as one Royal
Academy is like unto another. Even the old dames photographed
going in on private-view day are the same.
The London Group contained at one time practically all the
genuine painters there were in England, and these included Walter
Sickert, Matthew Smith, Gender, Meninsky, Ginner, Gore, Gil-
man, Wyndham Lewis, Roberts, Karlowska, and Bevan; also
202 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
Gaudier and myself as sculptors. New groups spring up now, but
they are ephemeral, and resemble those primitive creatures that
live by parting.
Not that I place great store in groups. I have always felt myself
to be alone, and not part of a group; and I do not care for the
gregariousness that makes most artists hanker after societies. I be
lieve in individual artists. The time seems to have gone by when
artists, as in medieval times, could work successfully together on
cathedrals.
On a building for which I worked (the Underground St. James's
Station), there were six sculptors, and that was not a successful
combination. There was little harmony in the result. One or two
sculptors would have done the work much better. I must say that
I can see no young sculptors of real promise at present. The schools
have turned out only some rather poor imitators of the Swedish
sculptor, Carl Milles, and there are imitators of Maillol or Despiau.
Some few have taken to imitating Henry Moore, and others mis
understand my work and imitate some technical idiosyncrasies,
mostly of my bronzes. Had I been called at any time to teach, I
might have had a great influence personally, but it looks as if I
have been very deliberately passed over, as on several occasions
when a vacancy has occurred, at the Slade School, on the death of
Havard Thomas, for instance, or at the Royal College of Art on
other occasions. For one reason or another I have been ignored,
and never has there been the slightest sign from heads of institu
tions that they thought I had anything of value to contribute to
art in the teaching of it. Yet I have had academic training and have
trained myself in school and museum, and best of all by practice.
I have never once been on a committee of an official institution;
and my one solitary honor, that of Aberdeen University, remains
unique.
SCULPTORS OF TODAY
With Rodin a new era in sculpture began, whatever his faults
were; and, though every schoolboy now seems able to pick holes
JOAN GREENWOOD
HEAD OF AN INFANT
ROMILLY
SCULPTORS OF TODAY 203
in him, he was a revivifying force which compelled sculpture into
paths which it is still following, or which have developed out of
his fecund example. Before Rodin, with Houdon, Rude, Carpeaux,
the form, solely realistic and decorative, remained in itself unin
teresting. With Rodin, modeling became interesting and individual
for its own sake; an element of imagination entered * sculpture
which included the grotesque. Rodin was a sculptor who, in his
search for expression, was not afraid to be grotesque and, in one
or two instances, even ridiculous, which of course no living sculp
tor could ever afford to be. I find Rodin now much underrated,
and the wiseacres of today will only admit that his drawings have
the stuff of immortality in them. This is an absurd judgment, and
we need only wait a few years for the pendulum to swing the other
way. For one thing, the vast output of Rodin makes his lifework
difficult to sum up. Where a sculptor of today makes one work,
Rodin made a hundred, and his own fecundity tires and bewilders
us all in such a collection of his works as the Hotel Biron possesses.
I find that a sculptor who is much lauded today, Despiau, really
has his foundation in Rodin. Actually Despiau worked for Rodin,
carving marble for him. I could point to a head in the Rodin
Musee which contains the whole of Despiau, and to me Despiau's
work is monotonous and often insensitive. He has a quality of
delicacy derived from Rodin in his heads, and especially recalls
the so-called Raphael head in wax. Despiau is very popular, more
especially in America where works of an aesthetic, or washed-out,
character have a great vogue— for example, Whistler, Marie Laur-
encin, "abstract art," Brancusi. His nudes amount to school works
which any clever student can produce. When you have seen one
Despiau, you have seen all, and to compare this quite talented but
limited sculptor with Rodin is nonsense. Rodin did not possess a
sense of the architectural, and that is why his "Porte d'Enfer" is
such a failure architecturally. From even a little distance it has all
the appearance of an anthill in commotion. Rodin concentrated
on the individual groups and figures, and the "Porte d'Enfer," to
io4 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
be appreciated, must be studied close to, when the tragic and
splendid qualities of the groups reveal themselves.
When I was a student in Paris, I was taken to Rodin's studio by
a fellow student, an Englishman, who made himself known to me.
He was an elderly man who came into the sculpture class at
Julien's, and I noticed his sincere but clumsy attempts to set up a
figure. He was Mr. Cayley-Robinson, who was fairly well known
as a painter in England, and late in life thought modeling would
help him to a better understanding of form.
He asked me one day if I would like to go to Rodin's atelier,
to which he had the entree, and one Saturday afternoon we went
together to the Rue de 1'Universite, where Rodin had several
studios adjoining one another, given him by the State. I saw there
the large Victor Hugo in marble, still unfinished, and many smaller
works in marble and bronze. One large low table was laden with
hundreds of small studies and sketches brought, I should say, by
aspiring sculptors and "mothers of genius" for Rodin's inspection.
How all these people with their incompetent sketches must have
taken up the master's time! How anyone had the impudence to
impose on him in this fashion, is incomprehensible to me. Rodin
himself, short, bearded, with a sort of round flat cap on his head,
looked calm and watchful at the same time. His neck was of
enormous thickness and gave his head a tapering shape upwards.
Rodin went about among his guests, and he would roll tissue paper
around a small bronze head and show it in that way. His quiet,
confident manner I mentally contrast now with the cabotin pose
of other artists of great reputation I met later. I did not speak to
Rodin, as I had only just arrived in Paris and knew no French. I
was quite content to look at things, and watch Rodin himself. I
never saw him again, although he was several times in England,
and I heard of how, when he was given a reception in London,
Rodin, not used to making speeches, responded very simply and
with few words. A sculptor called Tweed got up and began a long
discourse commencing, "If Rodin could express himself . . ." This
notion of the inarticulate artist is a common one. People do not
SCULPTORS OF TODAY 205
take into account that the artist thinks in form, in his own medium,
as a musician in sounds, and to ask him to explain himself or
translate his work in language is not only unfair, but unnecessary.
Surely the best communication of the sculptor or the painter is
through his work and in no other manner. The fallacy of the critic-
artist is abroad today, and present-day artists are pleased to have
themselves explained and even told by writers on art what their
program of work should be. Manifestoes are got out in the best
futurist surrealist manner, imitating political party cries and slo
gans, and groups even give themselves military titles like Unit One,
or CeU 33.
Bourdelle was another assistant of Rodin. After Rodin's death,
Bourdelle plucked up courage and denounced his old master as
"just a butcher." Bourdelle became a sort of official sculptor of
France, and his large and ambitious but withal empty works were
everywhere to be seen. As he was supposed to be an impressive
teacher, he gathered pupils from all lands about him. His work,
except in his own small things, is pseudo-Greek archaic or pseudo-
Gothic, and now that he is dead, will soon be completely forgotten.
Another sculptor of the same order, but far more capable, is
the Serb, Mestrovic, also "a great "stylist." I say stylist in the sense
that he can easily imitate any style or period he sets his hand to.
Sometimes he is Assyrian, often early Greek, then Gothic or
Rodinesque. He swept England and America off their feet, and
was hailed as a heaven-sent genius, aided largely by a picturesque
Balkan luxuriance of beard and hair. For some time the inner
emptiness of his heroically gesticulating groups and figures was
not discerned, and anyone who dared say he was not another
Michelangelo was looked at askance. Since that period Mestrovic
has taken more or less a back seat, and even his name, once so well
known, would, I think, go unrecognized even among sculptors.
He fulfilled the bourgeois idea of the sculptor to the utmost limit,
both in his work and in his personal pose.
A sculptor totally unknown in England, and to the rest of
Europe, is the American, George Grey Barnard. I knew his work
206 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
in America and thought his first large work, "The Two Natures,"
now in the Metropolitan, a very great work in sculpture. It is one
of the finest conceptions of our day. He spent a long life devoted
to sculpture and was "a law unto himself," going his own way.
His statue of Lincoln, which was offered to London in 1917, was
most unfairly and bitterly assailed by a stupid art critic, Sir Claude
Phillips. I answered this on October 6, 1917, defending Barnard's
"Lincoln" as a great work, in the Daily Telegraph. My letter I
give here.
I read with astonishment, the pontifical judgments of your art critic,
Sir Claude Phillips, upon the statue of Abraham Lincoln by George
Grey Barnard, the American sculptor, based solely upon what he ad
mitted was a very blurred photograph; and he is equally astonishing
to me, when he is full of respect and solemnity towards his own sug
gestions of what a monument to Lincoln should be. These two attitudes
are by no means uncommon to critics. George Grey Barnard is a very
great sculptor, an artist whose achievement is so superb, that his statue
of Lincoln should be awaited with the eager expectancy due to a new
unknown work by a great master. What there may be behind this by
no means accidental attack and Press campaign against the Lincoln
Statue, I do not know, but undoubtedly, Barnard, like all men of genius,
and of independent mind, would have ready waiting for him, the usual
pack, who at the first opportunity, would fasten upon him. I raise the
only protest I know of against this chorus of calumny, because Bar
nard has given the world works for which we will always be grateful,
and the attack on his statue of Lincoln in England, is manifestly unfair
and one-sided.
I remain,
Very sincerely yours,
JACOB EPSTEIN.
Lincoln's descendants did not like the statue, and this, no doubt,
had great weight, for the statue never was accepted for London,
but went to Manchester, where it is now in Plattsfield Whitworth
Park. In its stead a commonplace statue by St. Gaudens was set up
in London. Barnard knew of my defense of his statue, and wrote
SCULPTORS OF TODAY 207
to me expressing his pleasure. I was moved to defend Barnard's
statue, not only because I considered it a fine work which should
not have had that intrigue launched against it, but also Barnard
had been my teacher in a New York night class for sculpture in
the winter of 1901. I remember well his ardor and single-minded-
ness. Sculpture was his passion, and fortunately he found the sup
port of rich men, and also he received official commissions. When
passing through London in 1926, he asked me to assist him in a
great Memorial Arch he was at work on. I listened to him, but in
the end decided I would rather do my own work. Later in New
York, I did not see much of him because of his bad health, but he
generously turned over to me a commission which I was unable
to accept, as I was returning to England to do some work I had
agreed to do. I heard of him going to the Art Students' League
and lecturing to the students on my pieces in bronze which were
there, invoking the name of Donatello.
In sculpture, although I had my first lessons from Barnard, we
were poles apart in conception and execution. Barnard had a
passion for the heroic, derived from an intensive study of Michel
angelo, and I believe in all his thoughts and actions he had Michel
angelo somewhere in the background. He even boasted of having
made more figures and groups of heroic size than the great Floren
tine himself. To my mind he never achieved the intimate and the
personal which so appeals to me. On my return to America I was
surprised to find that Barnard's reputation had sunk very low, and
mere tyros thought him academic and spoke scornfully of him.
Brancusi is perhaps, of all modern sculptors, the man who
brought the greatest individual touch into sculpture; and he now
has his imitators and followers by the hundreds. Indeed, his form
ula, for a formula it became, is used for window decorating,
mannequins, and posters. His work was strongly influenced by
Negro art, and also by Cycladic sculpture; but in our own period
of tortured and realistic work his highly sophisticated art seems
fresh and strange— a paradox. Brancusi himself, when I first met
him, I found charming and simple in manner, and in appearance
208 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
like a sailor or a farmer. He was deeply serious but with plenty of
humor. We sat on a log, the only seat in his studio in Montparnasse,
and he offered his guests sweets out of a paper bag. He was fond
of telling funny stories about his sculpture. He had carved a bird
and someone asked him why he had not done the feet of the bird.
His answer was that "the bird's feet were in water and could not
be seen!"
Ortiz de Zarate said humorously that whenever Easter came
round he was reminded of Brancusi by the eggs. This referred to
a good deal of Brancusi's work taking naturally an egg shape.
Twenty years later I again visited Brancusi. Looking about me
I could imagine it to be the first visit: the work was the same,
Brancusi was the same, somewhat grayer and thinner. Instead of
drinking sour milk he now drank hot water: he said that hot
water cured one of all ills, even of love. As I was saying good-by
to him in the courtyard, a French artist passed with the inevitable
girl, going into their studio. We exchanged glances, and Brancusi
turned to his studio with its abstract and arid shapes.
In Germany, Lehmbruck did sculpture which has a sensitive,
but to my mind frail or sentimental, character of no great interest
sculpturally. Kolbe works cleverly enough in the tradition of
Rodin nudes, without adding to them. Barlach works in wood and
has a wholly Gothic inspiration, but his work has to me the ap
pearance of formula.
A fresh and stimulating note was brought into sculpture by the
casting into bronze of Degas's posthumous studies of nude dancers,
which I believe Degas had continued to do all his life, but never
thought of exhibiting. He let the studies fall into decay. They are
in a kind of wax invented by himself. When shown in London,
these small works were derided by sculptors who declared that
they were the kind of sketches that .they themselves throw away;
but I find these bronzes marvelous in their understanding of form
and movement. Graceful and with original gesture, they combine
classic poise and spontaneity.
In Sweden, Carl Miles has done a great deal of decorative work
SCULPTORS OF TODAY 209
which, while very able technically, seems to me academic and
derivative, and as a natural result popular. I met Milles in London,
and thought him modest and simple, but with no originality. The
indifference of London, except for a small purchase for the Tate,
led him to seek America, where he is a great success. He has had
an undoubted influence on English architectural sculptors, that is,
the sculptors whom English architects love to employ, as they
subordinate their work to such an extent that it hardly even exists.
In America, as in England, I found most of the younger sculp
tors influenced by Picasso, Brancusi, and Maillol. Of the latter I
have not yet spoken. Maillol, who is a sculptor influenced by
Greek work, is always spoken of as peculiarly modem. I cannot
see this, as his work, while often very fine, is to my mind mo
notonous, and the effect is heavy. More especially the head is
treated in a pseudo-Greek manner that is a complete misunder
standing of Greek work. He can never get away from his Greek-
ish nude, which to the modern mind can mean very little.
The cliques of today are always asserting the living qualities of
Maillol, and give his works titles in their encomiums like "living
art," or some similar appellation. What there is "living'* or even
life-giving about an art that derives its inspiration so completely
from ancient Greece I fail to see.
In America, Gaston Lachaise's work seemed to me to have a
fine quality and a sculptural understanding of materials. I believe
that he died without achieving plans which would have been a
solid contribution to sculpture.
Manship struck me as a very superficial decorative eclectic bor
rowing from everywhere. One could imagine that he had a book
of Greek designs, and on Monday mornings opened it at page one,
founded his Monday piece of work on that; on Tuesday, turned
to page two, and so on through the week.
I met Bill Zorach. He seemed to me to have splendid enthusiasm
and to be doing work that had fine sculptural qualities. He was
then only feeling his way, and I understand that he has since been
recognized and given important commissions.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
My Place in Sculpture
I HAVE often been asked by aspiring sculptors to help them to
get on their feet, and, not very long after this, have had the
ironical pleasure of watching them getting large commissions and
all sorts of decorative work from sources that would never come
near me; nor have they, when safely in the saddle, taken the same
interest in my work that they had formerly professed. In other
directions this spirit manifests itself thus; a certain author is very-
eager to write my life, and professes a tremendous admiration for
my work. I never answer any fan mail, and after two or three
unsuccessful attempts to get me to communicate with him, the
author sends me a most abusive letter in which he uses the expression,
"Your manners are as atrocious as your marbles." Somewhat re
vealing!
What amazes me is that from as far afield as South Africa, Aus
tralia, and western Canada, I receive letters from well-wishers
telling me just where I have not lived up to their ideals in my
work. Then there are the would be "inspiratrices" who send me
batches of photographs which are indignantly demanded back
after a week or two, so giving me much trouble. In many cases
sculptors or refugees from the lands of persecution send photo
graphs of their work to solicit my assistance, and I have certainly
sworn to their talent time and again. I have yet to receive proof
of a new Michelangelo. In some cases hoaxes are attempted, and
it always passes my understanding why someone should take the
210
MY PLACE IN SCULPTURE 211
trouble to make me believe they will endow me with commissions
and make me wealthy. They waste my time and leave a fictitious
address, usually an expensive luxury hotel Perhaps the pleasure of
feeling very big and wealthy and in a position to give a commis
sion to an artist, if only a sham one, is sufficient to fill their cup
with joy. i
From time to time I have received many miniature versions of
my larger works from amateurs, who certainly satisfy themselves
in this manner; but I find them irritating. What I have dug out of
myself with labor they translate into tiny, vague versions, working
from newspaper photographs, and in their simplicity imagine I
ought to be pleased. These works are always returned to their
makers.
It is naturally difficult to assess one's place in the period one lives
in— perhaps it is impossible. It is a process similar to painting one's
own portrait, or rather to working on a portrait in the round, a
really difficult undertaking. The artist usually dramatizes himself,
and that is why few self-portraits bear the imprint of truth. My
outstanding merit in my own eyes is that I believe myself to be a
return in sculpture to the human outlook, without in any way sink
ing back into the flabby sentimentalizing, or the merely decora
tive, that went before. From the cubists onwards, sculpture has
tended to become more and more abstract, whether the shape it
took was that of the clearness and hardness of machinery, or soft
and spongy forms as in Hans Arp, or a combination of both. I fail
to see, also, how the use of novel materials helps, such as glass, tin,
strips of lead, stainless steel, and aluminium. The use of these ma
terials might add novel and pleasing effects in connection with
architecture, but adds nothing to the essential meanings of sculp
ture, which remain fundamental. The spirit is neglected for detail,
for ways and means.
Another addition to sculpture is special lighting, flood lighting,
and coloring of sculpture. Fantastic and transient effects can be
managed similar to stage effects, but I look on all this as trivial and
not worth serious consideration.
212 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
The continual harping on the nude for its own sake has been
overdone, and a rest from the nude might do sculpture good.
Draped figures, as in Gothic work, might as an alternative today
seem as novel as the apotheosis of the nude after Gothic, I have not
been led astray by experiments in abstraction, or by the new
tendency to a tame architectural formula for positive qualities; I
have always sought the deeply intimate and human, and so wrought
them that they became classic and enduring. The main charge
against my work is that it has no "formal relations." By "formal
relations" the critic means that my forms and their juxtaposition
were just accidental. This I consider sheer nonsense. Because an
artist chooses to put certain abstract forms together does not mean
that he has succeeded in creating a better design than mine, whose
forms are taken from a study of nature. To construct and relate
natural forms may call for a greater sensibility and a more subtle
understanding of design than the use of abstract formulae.
I can quite justly complain of neglect of my work by architects.
Articles in newspapers and critics have instilled fear into them, and
I can give specific instances when an architect or an institution has
been warned on no account to employ me. All of my larger works
will easily fit into any architectural ensemble not totally out of
harmony with their character. I would mention in this connection
"Consummatum Est" or the "Adam." When my "Madonna and
Child" was shown in the new Duveen Gallery at the Tate, it im
mediately took its place in the architectural setting, and I had the
satisfaction of comparing it with other large works, even Rodins,
which seemed to have no architectural quality and did not relate
themselves to their environment. All my busts and heads take their
place in formal wall surroundings.
In the matter of commissions for portraits, I have suff ered from
neglect. My portraits of persons who might mean something his
torically are few and accidental. I have never, except in a few in
stances, been commissioned to do work from persons of great
worth, those whom the future will look back upon as leaders in
world endeavor, nor even those of social and political distinction
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MY PLACE IN SCULPTURE 213
such as Rubens, Velasquez, Donatello, or Verrocchio worked
from.
My larger works still remain my own property. What is of in
terest in this connection is that I have proved that I can make more
money by painting than by sculpture, as my landscape and flower
exhibitions prove. I have none of the pretended illusions that ama
teurs and those who do not practice an art have about the "sordid-
ness" of money. It takes some courage to remain a sculptor, and
Modigliani found that he was forced to take altogether to painting,
although I know he had a profound love for sculpture and the
practice of it.
Painters like Matisse, who occasionally do a piece of sculpture,
only do so as amateurs for relaxation or out of interest, from the
safe position of successful painting. The painter Gertler once told
me of how he had started a piece of sculpture, and after four or
five days' strenuous work, the piece was still unfinished, and he
gave it up. He argued that in the time he gave to one piece of
sculpture he might have made several paintings. Of course one
ought to live like the Chinese, who give years to one piece of work.
To do that I suppose one's family should live as Orientals are said
to do, on a handful of rice a day.
Live and let live. I have always admitted other forms of sculp
ture than my own and do not reason that if a sculptor does not do
as I do he is no sculptor. I have, despite every obstacle of organized
hostility on the part of the press, art critics, art cliques, and per
sonal vendettas, gone my own way, and have never truckled to
the demands of popularity or done pot-boilers. I do not say this
with any feeling of self-righteousness, for I have enjoyed myself
at work— sculpture, drawing, and painting— I have felt a natural
call to do, and I have had the opportunity to create a body of
work of which, taking all in aU, I am not ashamed.
APPENDIXES
APPENDIX I
The Strand Statues Controversy
1908
Excerpt from the Evening Standard and St. James's Gazette)
June 19, 1908. The first part of this article was quoted in Chapter
III.
We are concerned most of all, however, with the eifect which the
figures will produce on the minds of the young people. They cannot
be expected to exercise a full discrimination, and in any case the sight
is not one which it is desirable in the interests of public morality to
present to their impressionable minds. The same view unfortunately,
we think, seems not to be taken by the British Medical Association.
The difference between a nude figure in sculpture in a gallery, and
one exposed to the public gaze in a busy thoroughfare is too obvious to
need emphasising. If the statues had been erected inside the building,
no objection could or would have been offered. But in their present
position, they are certainly objectionable.
The question arises as to how they were permitted to be erected. So
far as we can ascertain, they are not sanctioned by any public author
ity, and inquiries go to show that no authorisation is needed to put
figures in sculpture on a building. The London County Council who
passed the general plan with the figures indicated but not outlined in
detail, had no jurisdiction. The Police, if photographs of the statues
were exposed for sale, could intervene. Their statements, however, with
regard to sculpture on a private building, notwithstanding that it may
be seen by the public, if they care to look at it, appear to raise a doubt
217
2i8 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
as to whether they are entitled to interfere. The absence of any
supervising authority as such in this case, calls for revision of the build
ing laws.
It is to be hoped in the case to which we refer, that the British
Medical Association will see the wisdom of modifying their plans. At
present only one of the figures to which we have taken exception is
exposed to full public view, the other being partially obscured by
the hoarding which still surrounds the figures in Agar Street. The
appearance of the building will not suffer if the features alluded to
are eliminated.
The Scotland Yard authorities, we are informed, have the question
of the Strand statues under consideration. In an informal way an
Inspector of police has already called upon a representative of the
British Medical Association and indicated that objection is taken to
the figures, and particularly to one of the female representations which
is still obscured by the hoarding in Agar Street.
The National Vigilance Society has also taken action.
The Evening Standard and St. James's Gazette quotes the Secre
tary of the Vigilance Society, June 19, 1908:
"I have personally, on behalf of the Society, lodged a protest with
the Secretary of the British Medical Association," said Mr. W. A.
Coote, the secretary of The Vigilance Society. He informed one of
our representatives that he is now putting the complaint in a letter of
protest to the Committee. "At present the sight is bad enough, but
when the hoarding in Agar Street is removed, it will be a scandal. I
am at a loss to understand the object of such representations. In no
other city in Europe are figures in sculpture of the nature shown on
the building in the Strand, thrust upon the public gaze.
"If photographs of the statues were sold in the public streets or
exposed for sale in any shop, proceedings would at once be taken.
We intend, unless the offending figures are removed, to take action,
and see whether the law is strong enough to deal with such a display.
If it is not, the fact will lend additional interest to the proceedings of
the Parliamentary Committee which is at the present time, inquiring
into the publication of certain books and pictures, and the holding of
certain exhibitions/*
STRAND STATUES CONTROVERSY 219
Mr. Walter Crane said on being interviewed:
"I have not seen the statues and do not know who the sculptor is,
and I can therefore express no opinion on the artistic merit. So far,
however, as the principle involved is concerned, I am entirely in favour
of frank sex representation in art. Undisguised portrayal in this respect
provides the sculptor with his best opportunities. Michael Angelo was
seen at his best in the frankly nude, and others whose work is of the
highest order did not disguise sex. To be artistic, however, sculpture
in this form must be noble. There is ignoble sculpture as well as noble.
I do not think it is a question of morality. The exigencies of our
northern climate, which necessitate the wearing of so much clothing,
are responsible for a great deal of false shame. In India and other
warm countries, Nature unadorned gives rise to no such feeling."
Next, on the zoth, under the heading "Bold Sculpture," the Eve
ning Standard went on:
Work to be stopped. The sculpture figures to which we have taken
objection on the new building of the British Medical Association at
the corner of the Strand and Agar Street were unreservedly con
demned by Mr. Edmund Owen, F.R.C.S., the association's own Chair
man of Council, and he intends at once, to call a meeting of the
Building Committee for the purpose of stopping the removal of any
more of the hoarding, until the members of die Council have had
an opportunity of seeing the figures for themselves, when he hopes
they will agree with him that they ought to be very much modified,
if not taken away altogether. As a matter of fact, the Council have
never had drawings of the statues before them, and the majority of
them are unaware of the nature of the figures. Mr. Owen had seen
them only in a partially finished state. In view however, of our pro
test, he paid a visit to the building today, accompanied by one of
our representatives. "I have no sympathy with them whatever," he
said, "after seeing the figures which we have condemned, and my
own opinion is that they ought never to have been put there. I had
seen some of them before they were finished, and did not like them
from the physical representation point of view. They seemed to be
poor figures. But I had no idea they were to be presented in the form
that some of them are. I cannot, of course, speak for the Council,
220 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
but I hope that other members will take the same view as I do when
they see the figures. The Council will not meet till July ist, but I
shall call together the Committee immediately connected with the
building, at once, and propose that instructions be given to stop any
more of the hoarding being taken down until the Council comes to
a decision. I think the Evening Standard has taken the right course
in calling attention to the matter before the more objectionable
statues have been exposed to full public view, and I have no ground
for complaint in what has been said."
We welcome this frank statement on the part of one in the position
of Mr. Owen. He supports what we have all along contended, that
no one with a due sense of responsibility who took the trouble to
see the figures for themselves, could approve them, and so far our
attitude has been justified. As we have already pointed out, only
one figure to which the least objection can be taken, is at present
exposed to the public view. It is one of a group of four on the
Strand side of the building. There are, however, four more on the
Agar Street elevation which is still surrounded by a high hoarding.
Work is proceeding on other statues, but these are still obscured by
the Sculptor's canvas. It is hoped that the Buildings Committee will
call for drawings of the unfinished figures. We have purposely re
frained from entering into any details with regard to the figures, and
even at the risk of being misunderstood, we decline to particularise.
In the form it appears on the Strand building, the sculpture may have
been appropriate in a Medical hall, but it is entirely unsuitable, and
not at all artistic or dignified in a busy thoroughfare. The most objec
tionable representations are still more or less hidden by the hoarding
in Agar Street, although two of them are plainly visible from the
wards of Charing Cross Hospital, and other buildings in the vicinity,
and in calling attention to them at this stage, one's desire is that
they may be modified or removed before they are exposed to full
public view. As art, the Strand figures in their present form, are not
beautiful, and one of the figures, at least, has no parallel, so far as we
are aware, even in sculpture galleries. What is complained of could
not escape the notice of the most casual passer-by, when the hoarding
is once removed, and that on a Strand frontage would constitute a
gross offence. Moreover, we did not take action until the matter was
already becoming a subject of common talk and of vulgar curiosity,
STRAND STATUES CONTROVERSY 221
whilst the fact of the private— and apparently useless admonition by
the police authorities, should suffice to explode the delusion that these
figures constitute an innocuous form of art.
On Monday, June 22, 1908, the Evening Standard announces
that a meeting of the Council will be called for July i, and goes
on to quote Mr. H. Percy Adams:
"In my opinion they are magnificent. There may be differences of
opinion as to the advisability of displaying one or two of them, or any
nude figures on a public building in London, but I cannot myself
agree with the view that any of them are objectionable. One of the
figures to which most objection has been taken is still unfinished."
With regard to Mr. Adam's last point, we can only say that the
sculptor's canvas has been removed from the statue, and it has as
much the appearance of being finished as any of those that are exposed
to view. A strong effort is to be made, we understand, to get the
Buildings Committee on Wednesday to pass the statues as they stand.
It is to be hoped that the members will, before entering on a con
sideration of the question, see the figures objected to for themselves,
and if they do, we have confidence that they will not permit them
to go to the public without considerable modification.
On the 23rd, the Evening Standard announced triumphantly:
Father Vaughan has raised his voice in denouncing the statues which
we have condemned, in their present form on the new building of the
British Medical Association at the corner of Agar Street and the
Strand.
"As a Christian citizen in a Christian city, I claim the right," he
declared, "to say that I object most emphatically to such indecent
and inartistic statuary being thrust upon my view in a public thorough
fare, through which I am often compelled by duty to pass.
"To the average man or woman, constructed as they are, these fig
ures will be occasions— I will not say for sin, because I will be told
there is no such thing— but of vulgarity and of unwholesome talk,
calculated to lead to practices of which there are more than enough
in the purlieus of the Strand already. There seems to me to be abso-
222 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
lutely no reason for going out of our way to disfigure the fagades
of our public buildings by such imagery, and it is a disgrace to thrust
upon our public highways statuary, talk and discussion which in the
lecture room, and for students may be necessary. Let us teach self-
reverence and self-respect, and not convert London into a Fiji Island,
where there may be some excuse for want of drapery. Let us not
innovate upon our time honoured practice in this country, and try to
out-Continent the Continent in indecent statuary, lest we have cause to
regret it in the end.
"In the name of public decency, I beg the Buildings Committee of
the British Medical Association not to sanction the uncovering of these
statues before the eyes of the public, many of whom, I regretfully
say, will not look upon them with the temperament of our artist, but
will feast upon them with the hunger of a sensualist. Surely it is our
duty not to feed, but to starve that sort of appetite."
On June 23, 1908, in a leader headed "The Strand Statues/' the
paper defends itself against the unexpected views of Charles
Holmes, Slade Professor of Fine Arts:
At the best of times, there is great difficulty in defining the limits
of art and the boundaries of decency. Here the problem is compli
cated by our unwillingness to describe the statues in detail. So far we
cannot go. Nor can the public see for themselves. It is inadvisable
that they should, and we trust they will never get the chance. The
letter which appears in the Times from C. J. Holmes, the Slade Pro
fessor of Fine Arts, shows how little assistance can be expected from
artists. If this were a question of art, we should regard Professor
Holmes's letter as an important contribution to the controversy,
though he does not refrain from talking of "ill-informed but none the
less violent attack." With the artistic value of the figures, however,
we have nothing to do. They may or may not have been conceived
in the grave, heroic mood of the pre-Pheidian Greeks.
What we have said, and what we maintain, is that they are unfitted
for the embellishment of a building on the Strand or any other street.
The Police, however, did realise the unsuitability of the statues
directly they had an opportunity of seeing them. They were so im-
STRAND STATUES CONTROVERSY 223
pressed by their unsuitability, that they immediately considered
whether their powers were sufficient to enable them to order a re
moval of the nuisance. Unfortunately, they found they could not
step in. Public opinion and the good sense of the management of the
Institution must effect what the Police cannot. We appeal to the
British Medical Association not to be misled by talk of art, which
is a side issue, but to use their judgment as men of the world.
We can even understand the chagrin of the sculptor and architect
on hearing it pointed out to them that their work was not of a fit and
proper kind. The desire for symbolism has led men astray before, and
will lead them astray again. Modern realism is calculated to assist the
aberration. They are certainly not the right kind of symbolism for a
public building. We go further; we say that if the hoarding were
removed, the public would very quickly arrive at the opinion we our
selves have formed, and that is, that the removal of the statues would
be demanded. Is it not better to remove them or modify them now,
without more pother? *
A letter from C. J. Holmes, Slade Professor of Fine Arts,
Oxford:
DEAR SIR,
May I ask the protection of your columns for the sculpture decorat
ing the new building of the British Medical Association in the Strand,
which seems in some danger from an ill-informed, but none the less
violent attack?
The impression left by the anonymous critic's words is one of
meretricious audacity: "On a Strand frontage such figures would
constitute a gross offence" and it was suggested that the figures still
concealed by the hoarding were even more objectionable than those
as yet on view. What was my surprise on seeing the building to find
it a structure on which austerity was carried to an extreme and the
sparse figures recessed some forty feet above the street frontage, to be
conceived in the grave heroic mood of pre-Pheidian Greece. By the
courtesy of a friend, I was enabled to see photographs of some of die
work behind the now notorious hoarding.
* See Evening Standard and St. Jameis Gazette for June 24 to July 2, 1908,
for f urther articles on The Strand Statues.
2i4 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
It was evident at a glance that we were once more face to face with
a situation exactly like that of 1850 when Millais exhibited "Christ
in the House of His Parents." We smile nowadays at the accusations
of indecency, blasphemy, and incompetence, which that painting
aroused.
May we not derive from them also the lesson of caution in dealing
with a new phase of sculpture? The pre-Raphaelites, it will be remem
bered, turned back from an over-ripe tradition of painting to the
example of an earlier age. Is not Mr. Epstein doing exactly the same
in turning back from our tired and sweetened adaptations of late Greek
ideals, to the stern vigour of the pre-Pheidian epoch? I believe he is
a young man, and as with most sculptors of keen perception, there
are some traces of the influence of Rodin here and there in his work,
but its main impulse is derived entirely from nature, as its technical
treatment is derived from pre-Pheidian Greece, and of all the work
done in England of recent years I know none that is more truly
living, scholarly and monumental.
In dealing with the aesthetic side of the work, I trust I have also
dealt with the question of decency. I can image a super-sensitive con
science hesitating before some of the sculpture which passes current
in the Salon, at the Royal Academy, in the Tate Gallery, or at Shep
herds Bush; but I cannot imagine any sane person petitioning the citi
zens of Munich to provide the stern warriors of the Aegina pediment
with petticoats. Yet it is precisely on these pre-Pheidian examples and
not on the more luxurious models with which we are surrounded,
that Mr. Epstein's art is based.
Those to whom appeals are now being made will doubtless consult
educated opinion before any action is taken, and there can be no doubt
what that opinion will be. Mr. Epstein must finally triumph as he
deserves to do, and as the pre-Raphaelites did before him. For the
moment these attacks have placed him in a position of grave difficulty;
and for that reason, although I have not the privilege of his personal
acquaintance, I have ventured to say on his behalf what will be a
commonplace to those who know anything of the history of sculpture.
I am, Sir
Yours faithfully
C. J. HOLMES
Slade Professor of Fine Arts, Oxford.
STRAND STATUES CONTROVERSY 225
Also the following letters:
June 24, 1908
SIR,
The Evening Standard and St. James's Gazette has devoted three
articles to the censure of the statues now decorating the new building
of the British Medical Association. The editor admits in his issue of
June 2oth that "many letters" have been received in defence of these
works. These letters have not been published.
Would you allow two artists to express their astonishment that
these austere and beautiful statues should have been questioned on
moral grounds? We would urge that it is unfair to suppress all expert
opinion on this matter, since it is manifest that the writer in the
Evening Standard is unacquainted with the degree of nudity allowed
in the decorations of public buildings in England, or on the Continent,
such as the Sistine Chapel for instance.
C. RICKETTS
CHARLES SHANNON
LANSDOWNE HOUSE,
LANSDOWNE ROAD,
HOLLAND PARK, W.
To the Editor of the Times.
SIR,
A public and persistent attack has during the last few days been
made upon certain sculptures on the outside of the new building of
the British Medical Association in the Strand. These sculptures are
represented to be indecent and calculated to corrupt public morals;
it has been at the same time denied that they are "artistic in any sense
of the word." The accusation seems to have been so far, so successful
that the question of modifying or removing the statues is, so it is said,
to be debated by a Committee of the Association on Wednesday next.
In the interest of British sculpture, may I be allowed to protest
against this attack— an attempt to enthrone ignorance and prejudice as
the final authority on questions of public art?
The conception of these statues is grave and austere. Those figures
which are nude are treated in what might be called the Biblical spirit,
226 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
from which all thought of offence seems totally absent. Anything less
calculated to appeal to the average sensual man could not be imagined.
The charge of indecency is a grave one, as I think it gravely wrongs
both the sculptor's intentions and the effect his work produces on men
and women of healthy mind.
Competent judges will doubtless not entirely agree as to the precise
merit of these sculptures as works of art. If I am not mistaken, it is
just their lack of sensuous charm which to many, will seem their chief
defect. But none will deny their seriousness and sincerity; I believe few
will fail to see in them a remarkable original power. Such qualities
usually provoke hostility from "the man in the street," now appealed
to as Judge.
It is a common cry that we have no sculptor capable of monumental
work. If, when a young sculptor arises who shows himself possessed
of the capacity to treat such a work in an adequate manner, far re
moved from the enfeebled conventions too characteristic of British
sculpture in the past— if he is treated with ignominy and his work
suppressed, the reproach will recoil upon the public itself.
I am, Sir,
Your obedient servant,
LAURENCE BINYON
From the Times, June 24, 1908:
A correspondent of the Times yesterday paid a visit to the new
premises of the British Medical Association in the Strand, for the pur
pose of inspecting the statues of Mr. Epstein, which have been already
executed, and are in process of erection upon the two fronts of the
building. These statues have given rise in certain quarters to some
adverse criticism, in answer to which a letter from Professor Holmes,
Slade Professor of Fine Arts at Oxford, appeared in the Times of
yesterday. It has been suggested that the statues are objectionable
from the point of view of public morality. The artistic aspect of the
question is one which the art critics may be left to decide between
themselves, but the moral aspect is one of more general interest, and it
was with a view to ascertaining how far there is any basis of fact for
the criticisms passed upon the statues from this point of view that
our correspondent paid his visit. It may be well to explain at the out-
STRAND STATUES CONTROVERSY 227
set that there are eighteen statues representing various phases of human
life, and certain symbolical figures.
Our correspondent reports, that accompanied by a friend, he first
examined the figures from the street. The statues are at a height of
forty feet to fifty feet from the ground, and cannot be seen adequately
except at some distance from the building. A hoarding at present pre
vents any complete view of some of the statues. The only figures to
which, in the opinion of our correspondent and his companion, any
exception could conceivably be taken are three or four nude male
figures, which, however, are neither indecent or even remotely sug
gestive.
The statue of "Maternity" represents a woman in pregnancy. This
figure is turned towards the wall, and is so high up on the building
that the particular feature to which exception is taken can scarcely
be distinguished, except by aid of an opera glass or a telescope; and
there is nothing even remotely immodest in the pose or execution of
the figure.
A closer inspection in situ from the platform from which the work
is carried out, confirmed the first impression that the statues are
inoffensive from the point of view of public morality, and in no way
justify the strictures passed upon them.
Times leader on the Strand Statues:
STATUES, MORALS, AND THE PRESS
The Committee of the British Medical Association will, it is said,
meet today to consider whether the statues on their new building in
the Strand ought to be "modified." The very idea of such a thing
would not have occurred to anyone had not an enterprising journalist
in search of sensational "copy" discovered them in these exceedingly
inoffensive works, raised some forty or fifty feet from the ground,
where nobody would see them unless his attention was directed to
them.
We are confident that a personal inspection of the statues would
convince the vast majority of our readers that the attack upon them
is wholly unjustifiable. They are single symbolical figures, some of
them draped, or partly draped, some of them nude. Two of the latter
228 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
are on the Strand front, and others, as yet only partially visible, are
on the west side of the building, where the scaffolding is not yet
removed. In none of these is there the slightest suggestion of evil. No
hint of passion or impurity. Their spirit and their treatment, to use
the word employed by your well qualified correspondents, Professor
Holmes and Laurence Binyon, Mr. Charles Ricketts and Mr. Charles
Shannon-is austere. Their offence is that they represent nude men.
Well, it is difficult in these days to be surprised at anything; but we
confess that we are surprised to find any portion of the London Press
assuming the moral attitude of the Pope who ordered the Vatican
Venus and some of her marble sisters to wear tin petticoats. We trust
that this appeal to the Philistinism and hypocrisy of a portion of our
middle class, will be met by the British Medical Association with the
contempt it deserves.
The Times, June 25, 1908
A meeting of the Premises Committee of the B.M.A. was held
yesterday afternoon. The committee will report to the Council on
July ist. The terms of the report are private, but it is understood that
the committee is favourable to the work being allowed to proceed.
The Times, July 2, 1908
Decision of the British Medical Association
A meeting of the B.M.A., was held yesterday afternoon at the
office of the Metropolitan Asylum's Board. Mr. Edmond Owen, chair
man of the Council, presided, and there were present about sixty mem
bers from all parts of the British Empire. The proceedings were private,
but we have been officially informed by the General Secretary, Mr.
Guy Elliston, that the matter of the statues on the premises of the
Association in the Strand, was discussed. A report was presented by
the Premises Committee recommending the Council to let the work
proceed. The Committee further resolved: "that it be an instruction
to the General Secretary to write and invite Sir Charles Holroyd to
ask him to associate with himself three or four other members, who
are skilled in art, to furnish the Committee with a report as to whether,
in their opinion, the statuary on the fagade of the new premises is
indecent."
STRAND STATUES CONTROVERSY 229
The following letter from Sir Charles Holroyd was read:
STURDIE HOUSE,
BEECHWOOD AVENUE,
WEYBRIDGE.
June 3Oth, 1908.
SIR;
In reply to your letter of the 25th and 26 inst. in which you ask
me for my opinion on the merits of the sculpture on your new build
ing. I desire to say that, although as Director of the National Gallery
I do not give advice about works of Art in private possession, I can
say what I think of them as a private citizen. In my opinion the sculp
tures are very interesting. They are dignified and reverent in treat
ment and the sculptor has expressed ideas in a way unusually suitable
to the material in which he has worked, and both ideas and workman
ship harmonise with the building. I do not know the sculptor, but I
hear he is a young man; from the works I have seen I believe the
British Medical Association will be proud to have given him this
work to do in the future, when he has made the name for himself,
which his work promises.
Yours faithfully
CHARLES HOLROYD
RS.
May I add that I think the work is too severe and reverent to be
in any way improper.
A leading article from the British Medical Journal, June 27,
1908, headed "An Old Maid With a Spy Glass":
In a famous passage Macauky says there is no spectacle so ridicu
lous as the British Public in one of its periodical fits of morality. Once
in six or seven years, he says, our virtue becomes outrageous. "We
cannot suffer the laws of religion and decency to be violated. We
must make a stand against vice." The Evening Standard and St.
Jameses Gazette seems to be trying to work up the public to one of
these periodical paroxysms. For a week or more it has been holding
up its hands in horror at certain statues with which the new buildings
i3o LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
of the British Medical Association are decorated. It has interviewed
all sorts and conditions of men, including the inevitable Father Bernard
Vaughan, without some platitude from whom no public discussion is
now complete. We cannot congratulate our esteemed contemporary
on the success of its appearance in the part of Mrs. Grundy. The
only effect of the efforts, which we will assume it is making merely
in the cause of decency, is to excite wrong ideas as to matters abso
lutely harmless in themselves. Swift well said that "a nice man is a
man of nasty ideas." In this sense the Evening Standard and St.
James's Gazette has shown itself "Nice" to a degree that can only
be called morbid. It complains of the nudity of certain statues. Now
there is a great difference between half veiled nakedness and simple
nudity. The short skirts of a ballet girl are more suggestive than the
chaste nudity of a Greek statue. As for the Statues to which the
attention of the National Vigilance Association has been called, we
confess we can see absolutely no indecency in them. If there is any
indecency it is in the mind of the spectator, not in the work itself. If
this sort of prudery is carried to its logical conclusion, anyone visiting
a gallery of pictures or sculpture will have to get first a certificate of
virtue from his pastor. These places are as open to the public as the
Strand, and there, as Byron says of the well-known edition of the
classics prepared ad mum Delphini by scholars of the Society of
which Father Bernard Vaughan is an ornament, anyone whose mind
hankers after that sort of delectation is able to glut his desire without
being denounced in the newspapers.
"For there we have them all at one fell swoop,
Instead of being scattered through the pages,
They stand forth marshalled in a handsome troop,
To meet the ingenious youth of future ages,
Till some less rigid editor shall stoop
To call them back to their separate cages,
Instead of standing staring altogether,
Like garden gods—and not so decent either."
Works of art which might excite the moral wrath of the Evening
Standard and St. James's Gazette are found in many churches. In some
letters of the late J. K. Huysman published in the Figaro, 23rd May,
PQ
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5
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STRAND STATUES CONTROVERSY 231
1908, there is a complaint of an equally foolish act of prudery per
petrated by the priests of the Cathedral of Chartres. He says that
among the wonderful pieces of sculpture to be found therein, there
is one representing the Circumcision, and he says with natural indig
nation: "Par Pudeur! 11 [le clerge] a colU un morceau de papier sur
le ventre de Jesus." That is Mrs. Grundy all over. She calls attention
to what would otherwise have passed unregarded.
Of the thousands of people who go up and down the Strand every
day, not half a dozen would have noticed the statues had not the
Evening Standard and St. James's Gazette pointed the finger of out
raged virtue at the details in them.
It is significant that its crusade has found little support from the
rest of the press, and we welcome the powerful help of the Times
which, in a leader confesses its surprise "to find any portion of the
London press assuming the moral attitude of the Pope who ordered
the Vatican Venus and some of her marble sisters to wear tin petti
coats." We think it right to note that the suggestion of the Evening
Standard that one at least of the statues which are as yet unrevealed
to the public eye is of a still more objectionable character, is simply
untrue. The statue representing Maternity, which we suppose to be
the one meant, is in fact more draped than any of the others.
The other female figures may for aught we know be pre-Pheidian,
as the Oxford Slade Professor of Fine Arts says; for our part we
should rather call them pre-Adamite. They suggest "the woman wail
ing for her demon lover" of the old legend, but there is nothing about
them to lead any rightly constituted human being into temptation.
We leave the discussion of the statues from an artistic point of view
to those competent to judge of such matters, but it is worthy of note
that the artists who have so far spoken have expressed a favourable
opinion of them. We have already referred to the letter of the Slade.
Professor of Art at Oxford. Other artists have expressed similar views
in the Times.
We may mention further that letters warmly praising the statues,
and strongly deprecating any interference with them have been re
ceived from:—
Mr. Sidney Colvin, Mr. Martin Conway, D. S. MacColl, Mr. Muir-
head Bone, C. J. Holmes, and others.
We are glad to be able to state that after full consideration, the
232 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
Building's Committee has decided to recommend the Council to leave
the statues as they are.
We venture to think that the whole outcry about them is nothing
more than a journalistic "scoop." The attitude of the Evening Stand
ard reminds us of an old picture in Punch of an elderly virgin in
seaside lodgings, complaining of men bathing in front of her window.
When it is pointed out to her that they are a mile or more off she
says:— "Yes, but then one can see with a spy glass."
THE STRAND STATUES
To the Editor of the British Medical Journal.
DEAR SIR,
The series represents symbolical figures of scientific study and
research and a presentment of Life, its origin and growth. Apart from
my desire to decorate a beautiful building, I wished to create noble
and heroic forms to embody in sculpture the great primal facts of
man and woman.
The first figure, starting on the Strand side, presents "Primal
Energy," a symbolic male figure, with outstretched arm in a forceful
gesture, as if passing its way through mists and vapours it blows the
breath of life into the atom. Next "Matter," a figure of rude and
primitive aspect, who folds in his arms a mass of rock in which is
vaguely enfolded the form of a child. Thus form and life emerge
from the inchoate and lifeless. Hygeia, symbolic figure of the Goddess
of Medicine and Health, holds the cup and serpent. Chemical re
search, a male figure examining a scroll; these two figures form the
corner decoration of the building. On Agar Street comes "Mentality."
The Brain a figure holding a winged skull, symbol of Thought. Next
is the "Newborn," an old woman presents the newborn child in a
cloak, "Youth" an aspiring figure with head and arms upraised. "Man,"
a figure of man in his energy and virility. Today the use of great
words like virility has become so besmirched by coarse shame, that
it becomes a hazardous thing for an artist to use them, in a descrip
tion of his work. This figure looks towards a figure of Maternity, a
brooding mother holding a child in her arms. The figures that follow
represent Youth, Joy in Life, youths and maidens reaching out and
stretching hands towards each other: they represent Young Life, pu
berty, (puberty is another word that is banned). Throughout I have
STRAND STATUES CONTROVERSY 233
wished to give a presentation of figures joyous, energetic, and mystical.
That the figures should have an ideal aspect, and be possessed of an
inner life, is a requirement of sculpture, and also that they should
adhere to the forms of Nature, the divine aspect of bodies.
It is very difficult for me to say in words, much that I have wished
to put into these figures: the bald description does not sound ade
quate: they themselves will suggest meanings I cannot express in
words. I was interested in the article you wrote about the statues,
for your paper, and your characterising them as pre-Adamite pleases
me very much.
JACOB EPSTEIN
British Medical Journal, July 4, 1908.
From a letter by Mr. Ambrose McEvoy:
72, CHEYNE WALK,
CHELSEA, S.W.3.
28TH JUNE, 1908.
"These works are, I believe, considerably finer than the decorations
on any public building in London. They constitute a great art pos
session for us. Surely it is ridiculous to suggest that there is anything
in these austere masterpieces to which any sincere person could take
objection.
The sensational press will write anything that will result in sales,
and is it not a common experience of dwellers in towns that neigh
bours will object to anything— even to a door plate."
From a letter by Mr. Sidney Colvin, Director of the British Museum:
"Conceived in a spirit of primitive severity and directness which
ought to have saved them from objection even on the part of the most
prurient of impropriety hunters and sensational journalists."
From a letter by Mr. Martin Conway (late Slade Professor of Art,
University of Cambridge):
"I venture to write and suggest that no hasty action be taken (at
your council meeting) on this matter, and that time be left for the
very warm approval of serious lovers of Art in this country to be
234 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
expressed, and your committee to receive the influential public sup
port which can be united and brought to bear in favour of the artist."
From a letter by Mr. D. S. MacColl:
"I may say that before the attack was made, I happened to pass
the building and was greatly struck by the strong and reserved char
acter of the work, its gravity and austerity in strong contrast with the
meretricious and floundering stuff that has been too commonly asso
ciated with recent architecture.
"I said to myself 'Here at last is sculpture,' and inwardly congratu
lated your Society on the fine thing they had done in giving a young
man of talent a chance to show his power."
To the Editor of the British Medical Journal.
DEAR SIR,
I see that an evening paper has started a virulent attack on the
sculpture on the facade of your new building, and as I understand
the paper in question refuses to print any letters refuting their attacks,
and as the other journals seem to think that an agitation of this sort
and from this particular quarter answers itself, I venture to address
you a few lines regarding the statues on your building.
The assumption by the Pearson newspaper that it alone is the voice
of the public, and the arbiter of what is moral, is a grave danger, and
were such an equivocal "voice of the public" followed, many things
we cherish today would long ago have ceased to exist. Even such an
ultra-respectable work as the Ajax statue in Hyde Park, was in its
time as virulently assailed by the same kind of thoughtless jejune
criticism. The use of nude figures in architectural sculpture is a cause
that has to rewin its battle within the present generation. An im
portant point is this, that those who have approved of photographs of
the statues, are told that their opinion goes for nothing, as they have
not seen the figures close at hand; of course such argument is nonsense,
as the statues are to be seen from the street which must be some
forty feet below.
However, I made a careful study of all the statues on the building
today, and should like to say how sincere and beautiful they are as
Art, and how essentially clean minded in motive. If there is anything
STRAND STATUES CONTROVERSY 235
approaching a fault, they can be said to have, it is possibly that they
lean too much to the side of an archaic austerity— anything less calcu
lated to give offence to decent-minded folk could not be imagined.
If a sculptor's work is to be at the mercy of every anonymous critic,
his art would indeed be carried on under intolerable conditions. Cer
tainly every objection against those statues of yours could be urged
with equal force against the Greek sculptures in the British Museum,
round which every Sunday School teacher is presumed to guide her
pupils. I venture to hope with some confidence that the British Medi
cal Association will pause well before doing these thoughtful and
distinguished works an irreparable injury. But experienced men of
science who have before now had to deal with popular misunder
standings of this kind touching their profession, will know how to
deal with these passing popular clamours— of that I feel confident.
MUIRHEAD BONE
To the Editor of the British Medical Journal.
DEAR SIR,
I have read the newspaper attacks upon the statues of Mr. Epstein's
which add so much distinction and beauty to your akeady fine build
ings in the Strand, with indignation and disgust. I cannot imagine who
the people may be who are attempting to defame the "austere and
refined work" of your sculptor. It would seem, however, that such
attacks could have arisen out of but two causes, one the desire of
journalists to earn a guinea or so, and the other out of some petty
jealousy or other.
I have examined the statues carefully and I cannot discover the least
hint of voluptuousness or immorality: on the contrary, I find them
nothing but a sincere and noble interpretation of the deepest things
of human life. Any objection to them on the grounds of morality is
foolish— if nothing worse. I do not know how you or your committee
are affected by these baseless attacks, and I am venturing to send this
note, in my capacity of Hon. Secretary of a society deeply interested
in all that makes for the elevation and beauty of our city life, to say
how much all genuine lovers of what is noble and beautiful, would
deprecate any tampering with these statues, which are works of rare
genius, at the dictation of nasty minded journalists.
HOLBROOK JACKSON
236 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
LANGLEY PARK,
MILL HILL,
LONDON, N.W.
DEAR SIR,
Would you allow me to congratulate the British Medical Association
on the austere and noble statues decorating their fine new building in
the Strand.
I have read with amazement and indignation the various shifty and
offensive articles published by The Evening Standard and St. James's
Gazette. No one with any knowledge of nude figures decorating
modern Government buildings in England and abroad, or with any
memory for the art of the past could have written them.
It would be lamentable if a body of cultured men should feel
themselves called upon to modify their plans under the impression
that these statues are unsuited to their present site. The public patron
age of the Arts is too rare for so notable an addition to our streets to
be injured or defaced at the impertinent demand of a sensational
paper.
CHARLES RICKETTS
In a leading article in the British Medical Journal the editor mentions
the opposition writers in the Evening Standard as "a motley group
prominent in which are Father Bernard Vaughan, Dr. Clifford, Mr.
Walter Reynolds, and Mr. W. A, Coote, Secretary National Vigilance
Association. It is edifying to see the Jesuit and the nonconformist
leader side-by-side on the same platform, but the same thing cannot
be said of Mr. Reynolds whose intelligence in such matters is shown
by his description of the figures as "gargoyles." This is ignorance, but
when he says "that the statues, if left in their present condition, will
most assuredly become a splendid draw to all the unchaste and libidi
nous curiosity seekers of London," he makes what we can characterise
as an abominable suggestion. The painter who gained for himself the
title of II Bracciatore succeeded in making things that were harmless,
suggestive. This is just what the Evening Standard is doing. If simple
nudity is subversive of public morals, we shall have to mutilate the
animals running about the streets. It might of course go further in its
educational enterprise and point out that Cleopatra's Needle is a
STRAND STATUES CONTROVERSY 237
phallic emblem, and explain to young men and maidens the symbolism
which has been attributed to the "vesica" window
After mentioning that the London County Council received Mr.
Reynolds' questions against the Strand Statues with derisive laughter,
the editor of the British Medical Journal goes on to say . . . "as for our
own council we are glad to be able to announce that the following
resolution which was moved by Mr. Andrew Clark and seconded by
the treasurer was passed with only two dissentients. That having care
fully considered the objections raised and the many favourable ex
pressions of opinion by eminent authorities on art as to the statuary
on the new premises, the Council instructs the architects to proceed
with the work." Here then ends this foolish business, for we cannot
take seriously the threat of private proceedings of which the Evening
Standard and St. James's Gazette of June 30th has made itself the
mouthpiece.
Let the old maid close her spy glass and devote herself to less ques
tionable topics.
In the British Medical Journal leader, July nth, entitled "The
Scribe and The Sculptor," the editor says:
Whatever the object of the Scribe may have been, the decision of
the Council reported in our last issue, has received the approval of
nearly all the press of the country. The Times . . . Observer . . . the
Architect ... the World . . . Daily News . . . Pall Mall Gazette . . . the
Graphic . . . the Nation . . . the Building Ne<ws . . . Manchester Guardian
. . . the Manchester Courier, to mention only a few. The editor of
Truth happily scoffs at the whole thing in a letter from his "aunt,"
who expressed her horror of the nude in such terms that the writer
says, "as soon as I got her letter I went to have a look at the statues
myself, and she ought to be quite satisfied with one thing, the whole
Strand opposite was packed with people, most of them girls and young
men, all staring up at the statues." And I couldn't help thinking what
a good thing it was, and how pleased the writer of the article must be,
because hundreds of these young people would never have had any
idea that the statues were indecent, or even troubled to look at them
at all if they had not been told, while now they will always be looking
out for indecent things, and thinking about them, and wondering why
238 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
they are indecent, and whether it does them any good or not. At least
it will have given them a new interest in life.
The Lancet congratulated the Council on their decision:
We could quote more expressions of opinion if space allowed, but
we may at least congratulate the sculptor on the testimonials to the
value of his work, which have been elicited by an injudicious scribe.
The last leader in the British Medical Journal ends with these
words:
We are glad that a sculptor of genius awoke one morning to find
himself famous, but we are sorry and not a little ashamed that he
should owe the foundation of his fame to the hypocrisy with which
other countries not wholly without reason, reproach the British people.
1935
Mr. Richard Sickert, R.A., wrote to the Telegraph as follows:
As the writer of a letter published in 1908 on the subject of the
Epstein statues in the Strand, I should be grateful if you would allow
me to add a few words in 1935.
The 1 8 statues form part of the architecture of the former home
of the British Medical Association. Your phrase in brackets "although
field-glasses were necessary to view them properly," should perhaps
have run, "to view them improperly."
The merit of the statues we recognise as consisting in the fact that
they form part of the architecture, and are inseparable from the
architecture.
As I should be, as a matter of common sense, prepared to listen with
sincere humility to th$ Rhodesians on aU the infinite subjects on
which they have a call to be heard, I would beseech them to grant
us some authority on matters to which we may have given for genera
tions and lifetimes some thought and feeling.
The whole building is planned to "tell," viewed from the road.
The convention of movement, life and growth is a miracle, a genius,
STRAND STATUES CONTROVERSY 239
an accomplishment. I can hear the flowers of rhetorical respect that
would be draped, at banquets, on this work if the sculptor were dead
instead of alive and kicking.
You must not ask of sculpture that it should be a shop-sign or trade
mark.
The Government of Southern Rhodesia cannot possibly consider
that the fact that they are to be housed in an august building once a
medical centre is anything to be ashamed of.
Yours etc.,
RICHARD SICKERT
ST. PETER'S-IN-
THANET. May pth.
From the Times, May loth:
MR. EPSTEIN'S STATUES
PROPOSED REMOVAL FROM STRAND BUILDING
SIR,
When Mr. Epstein's statues on what was then the new building
of the British Medical Association in the Strand were attacked in June,
1908, the Times came to their defence in a leading article (published
on the 24th of that month), and associated itself thereby with the
views expressed in its columns by a number of distinguished corre
spondents.
It is now reported that the government of Southern Rhodesia,
having acquired the building, is proposing to remove the statues, which
formed an integral part of its design, although we understand that it
would, in all probability, be impossible to cut out eighteen large
Portland stone statues from their granite niches without destroying
them. Apart from this, the statues were carved for their present situa
tion, and it is difficult to imagine how they could be satisfactorily dis
played in any other position.
We ask the hospitality of your columns to urge that even at the
cost of some change in the plans of the new occupiers, Mr. Charles
Holden's building in the Strand should be preserved intact with its
nobly planned and executed sculptural decoration. If the statues are
removed, and still more if they are irreparably damaged in the course
240 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
of removal, we find it difficult to believe that this generation will be
acquitted by our successors of a charge of grave vandalism.
(Sgd) KENNETH CLARK, W. G. CONSTABLE,
CRAWFORD AND BALCARRES, W. REID DICK,
H. S. GOODHART-RENDEL, G. F. HILL,
ERIC MACLAGAN, J. B. MANSON.
From the Evening Standard, May 10, 1935:
MISSING SIGNATORY
Sir William Llewellyn, President of the Royal Academy, was not
one of the many distinguished signatories to a letter in the Press this
morning appealing against the proposed removal of the Epstein statues
from the Southern Rhodesian Government building in the Strand.
I understand that Sir William was approached by Sir Eric Mac-
lagen, Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, for his signature,
but declined to add it on the ground that the appeal was "not an
Academy affair." His attitude had nothing to do with Mr. Epstein.
On the contrary, he would like to see the statues preserved.
A dramatic development of the situation occurred when Richard
Sickert indignantly repudiated the President's attitude and resigned his
membership of the Royal Academy. Consternation reigned, and the
President begged Sickert to reconsider his resignation. Sickert adhered
to his decision, and in the Telegraph was quoted as saying:— "The
Academy ought to have summoned an emergency meeting, and sent
a request asking to be allowed to make a representation to the King
on the subject. But they did not do so. It is not the President's fault.
He sticks to his ship and does what he has got to do. But I am not
an official. I am very fond of him and all my colleagues, who have
been most extraordinarily kind to me, but sloppy sentimentality does
not enter into it. They are in a sense Public Trustees as a dignified
representative body of art, and as such should have taken up the
matter."
President and Royal Academy's action (after it had met and fur
ther action was expected) analyzed by another President of another
Academy, in the Times, May 21, 1935:
STRAND STATUES CONTROVERSY 241
SIR,
A statement issued by the Royal Academy explains that Sir William
Llewellyn declined to support Sir Eric Maclagan's appeal because
"whatever his own feeling may be, it is not possible to keep his per
sonal attitude distinct from his official position as President of the
Royal Academy."
I cannot imagine that Sir William was requested to sign the letter
on behalf of the Royal Academy any more than Mr. Clark was re
quested to sign it on behalf of the Trustees of the National Gallery,
or Professor Constable on behalf of Cambridge University, or Lord
Crawford on behalf of the House of Lords. Much, however, as the
signatories of that letter may regret that Sir William's name could
not appear with ours, his delicacy throws into relief an inaction on
the part of the Royal Academy itself that it would be discourteous
not to consider surprising. The proposal against which protest is being
made is not that of taking loose statues out of niches, but of cutting
away integral sculpture from an architectural design by one whom
many of us consider to be the first English architect of our day.
Against such needless mutilation of fine architecture the Royal
Academy, which includes architects in its membership, might reason
ably be expected to make some public appeal. Sir William Reid Dick
has supported Sir Eric Maclagan, Mr. Richard Sickert has retired from
membership, but no official voice has been heard beyond the statement
on various internal matters that was published today.
I am, Sir,
Your obedient servant,
H. S. GOODHART-RENDEL.
President of Royal Institute of
British Architects.
Director of Architectural
Association School of Architects.
TRAVELLERS' CLUB,
PALL MALL,
S. W. i.
list May, 1935.
242 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
A leader from the Manchester Guardian, May 25, 1935:
THE MOTHER OF ARTS
The proposal to remove Mr. Epstein's statues, to "hack out the
eyes," as Mr. Muirhead Bone has forcibly put it, from the old British
Medical Association building in the Strand, in order to make it a more
fitting headquarters for the Government of Southern Rhodesia, is still
under consideration. It would be no bad plan for those with whom
the decision lies to look back through the ages and consider how
sculpture, that once inseparable partner to architecture, has conducted
her share in the partnership; to ask themselves where architecture
would have been if such major amputations had happened in the past;
and to remember the loss suffered by architecture in England during
the Reformation, when minor amputations of the sort did, in fact,
occur. It is not merely the loss of certain fine examples of the sculp
tor's art that is involved; more important is the mutilation of a work
of art— the buUding itself, a thing made of walls, windows, doorways,
and carvings, each adding its contribution to a carefully planned unit.
For architectural sculpture is no mere icing to the cake. It is, or
should be, an ingredient in it Those massive figures that flank the
great doorway at Abu Simbal, were conceived as part of a plan that
included the whole; the Parthenon frieze is no mere sculptured pro
cession but an essential portion of a temple; the pediment sculptures
lose more than half their meaning in the British Museum, robbed of
their enclosing cornice and open-air lighting; the statues in the west
porch of Chartres Cathedral tell their own story and have their own
meaning; but they have also a larger meaning when seen in their
setting. They and their canopies and the clustered columns with which
they alternate create a patterned richness which only the perfect fusion
of two arts can achieve. We in England have not so many examples
of this kind of happy marriage that we can afford to lose one of
the happiest but the statues on St. Paul's, lovingly mutilated though
they be by time, still give life and flourishing gesture to the Cathedral.
Harry Bates's carvings are an eloquent part of the Chartered Account
ants' Hall in the City of London. And the Savile Theatre has made a
gallant effort at significance with the frieze of figures it wears across
its front like a watch-chain.
STRAND STATUES CONTROVERSY 243
But the reaction against the meaningless exuberance of the late
nineteenth century has brought about a period of sterility in archi
tectural sculpture on the outsides and of architectural paintings on
the insides of our public buildings today. In banishing exuberance we
have also banished all possibility of giving them a meaning. Good pro
portions, refined mouldings (if, indeed, mouldings are allowed at all),
and cliff -like expanses of concrete may be the vehicles of "good taste,"
but they can never succeed in expressing anything deeper. "Good
taste" is merely the avoidance of bad taste, and "functionalism" is too
often the name given to a purely materialist view of function. If we
regard a town hall as a mere machine in which to pay municipal bills—
a kind of glorified penny-in-the-slot machine— or our public libraries
as mere shelves for containing books and card-index cabinets, then we
shall naturally need no sculptors or mural painters. If, on the other
hand, we can enlarge our view of their "function," and see the one
as a heart beating in the centre of a great city, a symbol of pride it
takes in the history it has made and is still making, if we can regard
the other as a temple of accumulated human thought and knowledge,
then we shall call in our artists— as Manchester, in a rare moment of
wisdom, called in Madox Brown— to give fitting expression to this
larger, but surely no less "functional" conception of a public building.
Doubtless any serious attempt to encourage a renaissance of this
sort, to persuade the mother of the arts to get on friendlier terms
with her children, would be met by objections from many quarters.
Have we, it would be asked, the money to waste on such luxuries
while our slums still stand and our poor are underfed and badly
housed? But surely no public moneys would be diverted from slum
clearance and housing by the employment of a few artists. And why,
in any case should the artist be forced to join the long queue of un
employed? He is a skilled workman, who, under present conditions, is
compelled to exercise his skill by filling his studio with pictures that
no one will buy. Again, it would be asked, have we any artists worthy
to turn our public buildings from mere machines with a material
function into shrines with a spiritual one? Certainly we have. The
chapel at Burghclere is an example of what could be done. And it is a
commonplace that opportunity discovers ability; it may even discover
genius. If Architecture will show herself to be the true mother of
the arts her neglected family will soon rally round her. They will be
244 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
glad of the opportunity to clothe the nakedness she has of late years
adopted as a fashion under the mistaken impression that nudism is the
only alternative to the befrilled and beribboned silliness of her clothing
in the last century.
I reproduce a letter from the architect of the British Medical
Association's building, Mr. Charles Holden, from the Manchester
Guardian, May 29, 1935:
MR. CHARLES HOLDEN'S APPEAL TO SOUTHERN
RHODESIA
SIR,
When I first heard of the proposal to remove the statues from the
building recently occupied by the British Medical Association, I as
sumed that it was the intention of the Rhodesian Government to pull
down the building and erect a new building to suit their special needs.
Such a desire, though lamentable, might not be considered unreason
able; but when, as it now appears, there is no such intention, and it is
proposed to remove the sculptures for some imaginary and doubtful
gain to the efficiency of the building the position is indeed very
different.
These sculptures were defended in the first instance by a large body
of influential and serious art-lovers who were undisputed authorities
on these matters, and the fact that after all these years an equally
formidable defence has been raised against their removal must carry
conviction to any reasonable person. The sculptures are, in fact, works
of first importance.
In my opinion, there is a universal quality about the work which
is not only rare in our own times but in the whole history of sculp
ture, and I would plead with Southern Rhodesia to protect these
treasures which they appear to have acquired inadvertently and with
out the full knowledge of their importance.
Yours etc.,
(Sgd) CHARLES HOLDEN
9, KNIGHTSBRIDGE,
HYDE PARK CORNER,
LONDON, S.W.i. igth May, 1935.
STRAND STATUES CONTROVERSY 245
From the Manchester Guardian, May 31, 1935:
The side of art in which the English are poorest is admittedly
sculpture, and all foreign critics of London have dwelt on the poverty
of its outdoor sculpture. It is the more surprising, therefore, that the
most remarkable example of sculpture and architecture combined, a
work which has the admiration of the architectural and sculptural pro
fessions, should now be in serious danger of destruction through the
removal of its statuary.
The matter has already been much in the public eye, but so far
the South Rhodesian Government, which has purchased Agar House,
designed by Mr. Charles Holden, with sculpture by Mr. Epstein, has
shown no signs of changing its mind, although the heads of the chief
artistic and learned institutions of the capital have interceded and a
famous artist of the Royal Academy has resigned from that institution
because its president did not add his name to the number. Indeed, it
has now been published that the Rhodesian Government have made
an offer of two of the statues to Australian museums. The Rhodesian
Government has said little in extenuation of its amazing decision,
except that the statues are too high up to be properly seen and that
it does not consider them suitable for a building in which it carries on
its affairs. It is not argued by the defenders of the Agar House that
under no conditions should a building be destroyed or interfered with
because it had good architecture and good sculpture, but that this
building and its sculpture should be preserved because if a competent
committee were to schedule modern buildings as well as ancient build
ings most worthy of preservation this masterpiece of Holden's and
Epstein's would be the first to be scheduled. Such destruction as is now
proposed would be considered unthinkable a few years hence.
Some reports having appeared of the statues being in a ruinous con
dition, it was my fortune to spend an afternoon with Mr. Epstein
examining them from adjacent buildings in a good light with the aid
of glasses. A few pieces of damage (which will be mentioned later)
have been done as is the case with Portland stone statues all over
London, but only patient scrutiny reveals these defects and the
eighteen figures stand in their imaginative richness, adding a curious
life of their own to the building and fulfilling the function the archi
tect contemplated in weaving together the two materials of which
246 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
the building is built, granite and Portland stone, the white weathering
of the stone statues against the granite making a delightful union. It
is one of the few buildings in London conceived with a view to the
weathering effect of Portland stone.
Charles Holden designed this distinguished building with its sculp
ture as an indivisible whole. You appreciate that when you see how
the three lower storeys are in granite and the fourth and the attic in
Portland stone, and inset in the third story granite are the eighteen
monoliths of stone, carved into the statues and their background. The
stone blocks are keyed into the granite, and so the figures and their
background cannot be removed except by cutting up the granite wall,
and then the figures would almost certainly be broken to pieces in
the operation. Charles Holden the architect, who knows exactly how
the sculptures are bedded in the fabric, has reported to the South
Rhodesian Government that, in his opinion, removal would seriously
endanger the sculpture, so any other architect who puts his opinion
against Mr. Holden's and reconlmends the operation of removal is
taking upon himself a grave responsibility.
Portland stone, as the statues in that material which decorate the
roof of St. Paul's have shown, has many weaknesses for outdoor
sculpture; and, as with Bird's statues there, Epstein's figures on Agar
House have not all worn equally well. A shelly piece in the stone and
a bad drip from the ledge above in certain weather weakens the
material, so that projecting pieces may break off or flake away.
Epstein's sculpture has suffered in some degree. Four of the eighteen
figures have lost hands or forearms and the faces of three figures are
affected, while a part of the foot of one figure has gone. These are the
full casualties during the twenty-seven years they have been in posi
tion, and, having stood the weather and the London acids and shed
the weaknesses of the stone, it may be taken that the worst has
happened to them, apart from the slow wearing away of the stone,
which will continue for many years without much loss to the grace
and significance of the statuary, as the older Portland stone sculpture
in St. Paul's and elsewhere in London proves.
Through two artist friends, Epstein met Charles Holden in 1907,
and the architect felt at once that Epstein was the sculptor to deco
rate the new building in the Strand he was designing for the British
Medical Association. Schemes for the sculptures were suggested by
ffi
S3
M
STRAND STATUES CONTROVERSY 247
the association, but in the end Epstein had his way in the design of a
series of figures not following the illustrative ideas and medical his
torical portraiture first favoured by the association but a free decora
tive conception of figure designs, imaginatively expressive of spiritual
and physical energy, concerned in some way with the seven ages of
man. He submitted small clay models, which Holden approved, and
they were accepted by the association. The statues, which form a
sort of frieze round the building, do not represent "pathological con
ditions of humanity unsuitable for the decoration of a Government
office," but are mainly representing youth and energy and so emi
nently expressive of the vigour and aspirations of a young colony.
Then Epstein began his stupendous task, probably unequalled since
the Renaissance, of producing within fourteen months eighteen full-
size figures carved from blocks of stone in position in the building.
He had two carver assistants, and the work was done through all sorts
of weather up in the cages in the scaffolding roofed with tarpaulin.
Epstein made eighteen full-sized figures in clay, of which plaster casts
were taken, and then the work was done in the stone, roughly shaped
by the assistants and carved to life by the sculptor. Each figure is
entirely different from the other, and the variety of design and char
acter in the eighteen figures, all hewn from similar monoliths of Port
land stone, seven feet high, makes them unique in our architectural
sculpture. In these powerful imagined and brilliantly executed figures
lives the youth of Jacob Epstein.
As Epstein contemplated that day the fourteen statues on the long
Agar Street fagade, with the afternoon light upon them, as we stood
on the open gallery of the turret corner building across the way, he
was probably thinking of the mental and physical energy that had
gone to their making. "I am not ashamed of them," he said. "Would
you do them differently if you were doing them now?" "Yes," he said,
after thinking for a time. "That's how I felt then. They would be
different if I did them now, a different mood, more contemplative
perhaps. Better? I don't know. It's a young man's work." His hands
moved as he looked at them, probably thinking of the year of effort
on the scaffolding, calculating and carving in all sorts of weather in
the London summer, autumn, winter and spring, when they took shape
and came into the world of beauty one by one.
JAMES BONE
248 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
A letter from Mr. van Dieren about the right to destroy the
statues, from the Daily Telegraph:
NO LIBERTY TO DESTROY ART
To the Editor:
SIR,
Will you allow me, as the author of the first book on Epstein's
work, to reaffirm a principle which some participants in the recent
controversy disregard or deny.
Most correspondents agree about Epstein's great gifts and person
ality. Both are sufficiently extraordinary to cause violent reactions.
As Mr. Sickert put it, Epstein is very much alive, "and kicking." This
disturbs numerous critics who would publicly worship him if only he
were conveniently dead, preferably for some centuries.
Meanwhile, representatives of bluff and sturdy commonsense have
wanted to know what the fuss is about. They indignantly ask whether
the man who buys a work of art is to be in a different position from
one who acquires any sort of commodity. Cannot he do with it as he
likes?
The answer is: Most emphatically not! No more than you may dis
charge your own gun in the street, or kill your own wife. Shylock
could not even maintain its proprietary rights in that single pound of
flesh.
The buyer of a work of art takes on a trust, which implies duties
as well as rights. He is a patron whose responsibilities are his privileges.
French and Italian law permits private ownership of art treasures, but
their removal or exportation only within strict limits. In any country
a claim of buyers to chop them up would be promptly met by legisla
tion. Acts of vandalism are everywhere against public policy.
It is true that Epstein is not an Old Master. Not yet! But he will be
one day. By that time the Strand building, with the statues in the par
ticular position that was part of the sculptor's conception, will rank as
a national monument.
We do not concede to the man who buys a piece of land the right to
remove or destroy anything on it that might displease him, which
might happen to be Stonehenge or Salisbury Cathedral. The buyer of
STRAND STATUES CONTROVERSY 249
valuable sculpture as part of a building incurs the ethical obligation to
preserve both in good condition.
The logic of the position, therefore, is perfectly clear. If the Rhode-
sian Government disapproved of the statutes, (it is immaterial for what
reasons), the building simply was unsuitable for their requirements,
and they might have looked around for one to which no similar prob
lems or controversial features were attached.
Yours, etc.,
(Sgd) BERNARD VAN DIEREN
ST. JOHN'S WOOD,
N. W.
The following letter from Sir Muirhead Bone; in the Manchester
Guardian, May 16, 1935:
SIR,
I am glad that the Manchester Guardian feels concerned about the
strange proposal of the Southern Rhodesian Government to remove
the famous statues by Mr. Epstein from the building they have acquired
in the Strand.
It is a proposal to tear an important page from the art history of
England. These statues are truly landmarks in that history. Taken away
from the building for which they were designed (they are indeed its
only monuments, as the architect, Mr. Charles Holden, kept his whole
fagade severely plain in order to emphasise them to the utmost), they
would lose most, if not all, of their meaning, and London would lose
the most successful, perhaps, of all its modern art monuments. And we
art-lovers would feel such a robbery keenly. The monument I speak
of is the perfect combination of the building and its statuary.
The history of sculpture— that most difficult of arts, the one most
deserving of public encouragement and endowment— is strewn, as every
student knows, with pathetic fragments, reminders of noble projects
which age or death overtook before a complete conception could be
brought to fruition. Such were the half-hewn, weed-grown torsos of
Michel Angelo's one used to come across in the dark alleys of the
25o LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
Boboli Gardens and gaze at with awe and an overwhelming sense of
the pathetic grandeur of this art with its resolute claim to everlasting-
ness. In the old British Medical building in the Strand a happily com
plete thing came into existence— an achievement uniting one of the
very first buildings to show the real style of modern architecture with
the earliest and perhaps the happiest public work by our chief English
sculptor.
So I entreat the Southern Rhodesian Government to pause while
there is time and realise the depth of feeling in the whole of our art
world against such vandalism. Their proposal creates a grave precedent
which I am sure they would hesitate to inflict on the London public
who care for such matters as their first welcome in our midst showed.
This great series of sculptures was once before in danger of removal,
but the art-lovers of London united to fight for them, and they stand
above the Strand to this day as a testimony of a notable victory over
Philistinism and misunderstanding. To hew them down now would be
a serious discouragement to English art, and a disheartening setback to
its progress in England. Even were it possible to remove the sculptures
safely, their whole purpose would be entirely frustrated by this hack
ing out of the "eyes" of the building, and dispersing them for ever to
the twilight of collections. I do not think it is too much to say that
this building has proved a real "academy" to sculptors and architects,
for the difficult art of sculpture applied to architecture is here seen to
perfection. All this would be gone, and it would prove a real loss to the
public good.
If the Southern Rhodesian Government would act as one is sure
Rhodes himself would have acted— for no one was keener, Sir Her
bert Baker makes plain in his book, in recognising and encouraging
dignity in architecture and sculpture—they would magnanimously hold
their hand now; a great work of art is in their power. For there is no
question that such destruction as they propose will be considered
unthinkable by anyone (including their own Government) a few years
hence. For Mr. Epstein is graduating rapidly to classic rank and to the
respect that is due to the work of a classic.
(Sgd) MUIRHEAD BONE
1 8th May, 1935.
STRAND STATUES CONTROVERSY 251
The recommendation of the Royal Fine Arts Commission:
ROYAL FINE ARTS COMMISSION,
6, BURLINGTON GARDENS,
W.i.
R.F.A.C. 267/4*1.
ipth July, 1935.
SIR,
In reply to your letter of June 6th, I am directed by the Royal Fine
Arts Commission to state that from enquiries made from the Southern
Rhodesian authorities, it appears to be certain that your sculpture will
not be removed from Agar House.
I am, Sir,
Your obedient Servant,
(Sgd) H. C BRADSHAW
Secretary to the Commission.
Jacob Epstein, Esq.,
18, Hyde Park Gate,
S.W.j.
I give the letters of T. W. Earp, Muirhead Bone, and Edwin
Lutyens, on different points and facets of view on the tragedy of
the statues.
The following letter by T. W. Earp appeared in the Telegraph of
June 23, 1937:
SIR,
The demolition of Epstein's statues on the front of Rhodesia House
entails more than the loss of a now familiar London landmark. It blots
out eighteen works by one of the greatest sculptors of his time.
Epstein's earliest achievement of importance and the basis of his fame,
they were the key to future estimates of his art.
A special aspect of the statues' destruction is the light it throws on
the function of the Royal Fine Arts Commission. Two years ago that
body gave Mr. Epstein an assurance that his works would not be
removed, yet last week they were doomed without reprieve by the
owners of Rhodesia House.
252 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
The Commission has proved powerless, for its warrant gives it only
consultative and advisory action. In France its equivalent can actually
save the country's monuments of art and history from demolition. Here
the Commission is limited to pious aspirations and ineffective reproofs.
In view of increasing vandalism this is not enough. We lose prestige
along with beauty. The Royal Fine Arts Commission needs authority to
back its word. By giving it uselessly in the case of the Strand statues,
it has weakened even the little force that it possesses.
Yours faithfully,
T. W. EARP
And of Mr. Muirhead Bone in the Times, June 28, 1937:
SIR,
It will, I think, be generally agreed that the disappearance of the
famous series of statues by Mr. Epstein from the building in the Strand
now belonging to the Government of Southern Rhodesia would be a
serious loss to the public art of London— not a city which can well
spare any sculpture of merit from its buildings. I venture to appeal to
their owners rather to restore any decayed stones among the eighteen
figures than order their wholesale destruction.
Decayed stonework is no new or indeed difficult problem. The col
leges of Oxford, for instance, tackle the same sort of thing year in,
year out; but I have never yet heard of them completely obliterating
an admired series of sculptures on their buildings when faced with the
restoration of a few ailing pieces. It is difficult to credit that entire
destruction is the solution proposed by the present owners of this fine
building and I know I speak for many art lovers in entreating them to
reconsider the matter. There must certainly be a better way, and the
respect due to works of real genius— for these famous figures have been
widely accepted as that— claims a serious attempt to find it. A careful
survey by the original architect, Mr. Charles Holden, would seem a
natural preliminary.
I am, Sir,
faithfully yours,
(Sgd) MUIRHEAD BONE
BURLINGTON FINE ARTS CLUB,
W.i.
STRAND STATUES CONTROVERSY 253
In the Daily Telegraph, Sir Edward Lutyens, R.A., wrote:
August 23, 1937.
SIR,
The discussion that has taken place, and is yet taking place over Mr.
Epstein's unfortunate sculptures at Rhodesia House, in the Strand,
gives food for thought and makes one wonder as to its sincerity.
Nothing is more distressing to an artist than that his work should
collapse, even though he may be in no way responsible for the obvious
cause of failure.
In the case of a living artist, the loss is not irreparable; and in that
he is still alive and in the full vigour of work and imagination, and with
the faith he has in himself, he surely knows that within his wider power
he can yet achieve better than he did years ago. Real tragedy occurs
when the work of a dead genius perishes and the spark that created it
is no longer existent. Such loss is irreparable. The rapidly changing
character of London, and indeed, of the whole of our countryside,
gives daily evidence of this tragedy that is overwhelming us, and, with
the exception of a few personal cases, is there any effective action
being taken on the part of the general public to avert a climax of
calamity?
Yours faithfully,
(Sgd) EDWIN L. LUTYENS
5, EATON-GATE,
S.W.i.
This letter of Sir Edwin Lutyens is grotesque with its talk of the
sculptor in the "full vigour of work and imagination," etc. etc., in
view of the fact that this eminent and busy architect has never
once even approached me with a request for sculpture during his
long life.
APPENDIX II
The Tomb of Oscar Wilde.
Attack and Defense
From the Evening Standard and St. James's Gazette, June 3,
1912:
THE TOMB OF OSCAR WILDE
MR. J. EPSTEIN'S DIGNIFIED SCULPTURE
Seldom in this country are we permitted to see such a dignified
piece of monumental sculpture as Mr. Jacob Epstein has carved for the
tomb of Oscar Wilde. It is on view at the sculptor's studio, 72, Cheyne
Walk, for a month before being erected in the cemetery of Pere La-
chaise, in Paris. The first thing that strikes one is Mr. Epstein's regard
for his material and its purpose. From the earliest ages it has been the
almost universal instinct of humanity to set up a stone over the dead,
but modern sculptors are too apt to forget that every touch of the
chisel, though justified by the craving for expression, is a destruction
of the monumental character of the stone, Mr, Epstein has not for
gotten this, and his work, though an expression of human emotion,
recognises the rectangular solidity implied in the idea of a tomb. It is
not executed but conceived in stone. The stone he has chosen for his
purpose is known as "Hopton Wood." It is a limestone that is not
quite marble and has the advantage over the latter of looking already
weathered, so that it takes its place at once in natural surroundings
without the effect of rawness.
The conception embodied in this great block of stone is that of a
winged figure driven through space by an irresistible fate. The Greek
rather than the Egyptian Sphinx might have been the suggestion—
254
THE TOMB OF OSCAR WILDE 255
though the figure is male— and in this case the Sphinx has become its
own victim. The figure drives forward to sheer volition without aid
from the limbs or tremor of the wings. The arms are extended back
ward along the sides, the knees slightly bent, and the plumes of the
wings are horizontal in strictly parallel lines. Upon first approach the
impression is that of the indomitable thrust of breast and shoulder.
The face, remotely suggesting that of the dead writer, is a little
upturned and blind to external light, the inner driving power being
symbolised by little figures of Intellectual Pride and Luxury above
the head Fame, with her trumpet, is carved upon the forehead.
The work, in very high relief rather than in the round, is as reserved
in execution as it is monumental in conception. The muscular divisions
are suggested by linear treatment rather than by aggressive modelling,
and a vertical plane would enclose the carved surface of the monu
ment. Thus there is nothing to destroy the effect of a rectangular block
of stone that has felt itself into expression.
From the Pall Mall Gazette, June 6, 1912:
OSCAR WILDE'S TOMB
The tomb— for it is a tomb and not a "monumental Marble"— which
Mr. Jacob Epstein has carved for the sepulchre of Oscar Wilde in the
cemetery of Pere Lachaise, is now completed. Timid visitors who
know much or little about sculpture have been popping in and out of
Mr. Epstein's studio in Cheyne Walk during the past week, and have
been retiring again in ecstasy or bewilderment, according to their tem
perament or their preconceived ideas of mausoleums and tombstones.
For undoubtedly Mr. Epstein's notions of mortuary memorials are
unconventional and quite likely to shock people who associate Gothic
art so closely with religious ceremonial that a Pagan or Archaic for
mula becomes an offence when applied to the commemoration of the
dead.
A SCULPTOR IN REVOLT
For Mr. Epstein is not only a real sculptor— a carver, not a modeller
—but he is also a Sculptor in Revolt, who is in deadly conflict with
the ideas of current sculpture, and who believes that it is on the wrong
256 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
track altogether. And one would be bold in denying that he may be
right. Imitation of Nature, either in bronze or marble, becomes mere
futility and ape-work unless it be illuminated by a plastic idea, not
only closely associated with and deriving all its beauty from the
medium in which it is worked, but suggested by it. As the painter's
idea lies, not in literary suggestion or imitation, but in the perfection
of the paint, so the carver's idea must be born in the marble and spring
directly from it. It is obvious that Mr. Epstein did not propose to be
either a literary or a moral critic of Oscar Wilde. This brooding,
winged figure, born long ago in primitive passions, complex and yet
incomplete, is a child of the marble, and is not an enlarged copy by
some other hand of a highly finished plaster model. It has been created
in anguish under the driving obsession of an idea. The hand of the
sculptor has groped in the block of marble impelled to the expression,
without words or definitions, of the haunting tragedy of a great career.
How you are to apply this figure to the facts of Oscar Wilde's life—
to his work or his character— is not a question that arises. You might
as well seek for the character of the departed hero in the Funeral
March. This is only Mr. Epstein's commentary, serious and profound,
unobscured by conventional formulas, and inspired by an acute neces
sity for utterance. "Go and see it at once," is my urgent advice to all
who are interested in sculpture, and think of it, if you can, on a hill
top in P£re Lachaise, dominating all those tawdry memorials of the
easily-forgotten dead.
G. R. HALKETT
The following is a translation of an article in the Illustrated Sup
plement to U Action de I' Art, March 15, 1913:
In September 1912, the prefect of police forbade the unveiling of the
monument which he considered offensive to public morals.
Recently on the loth February, in accordance with a resolution
passed by the Comit6 d'Esthetique de la prefecture de la Seine, the
prefect advised the London representative of the Oscar Wilde com
mittee that he must mutilate this work by the sculptor Epstein failing
which, he would order its removal at the expense, risk and peril of the
owners. The Comit6 d'Esth6tique consisted of Messieurs Delanney,
THE TOMB OF OSCAR WILDE 257
prefect of the Seine, president; Aubonel, secretary-general, vice-presi
dent; Lorieux and Alexandre, inspectors-general of roads and bridges;
Pascal and Never, members of the Institute; Charles Girault, architect,
member of the Institute; Denys Puech, Injalbert and Antonin Mercie,
sculptors, members of the Institute; Selmersheim, inspector-general of
historical monuments; Bordais, Defer, Dumont, industrial engineers;
BoUeau, architect; Alasseur, ex-contractor for Public Works; Bouvard,
honorary director of the prefecture; Galli, chairman of the municipal
council; Dausset, chairman of the budget committee; Cherioux, chair
man of the third under-committee of the municipal council, contractor
for Public Works; Mithouard, vice-chairman of the under-committee
of Vieux-Paris; d'Andigne, municipal councillor; and Georges Cain,
curator of the Musee Carnavalet.
With this question of the Oscar Wilde monument, the very liberty
of art is threatened. For this liberty Charles Baudelaire, Gustave Flau
bert, Catulle Mendes, Jean Richepin, Paul Adam, Lucien Descaves,
Charles-Henry Hirsch, Steinlen, Forain, Louis Legrand, Willette, Poul-
bot, Grand] can, Delannoy, etc., have not feared to risk the rigours
of the law.
The interdicts of the prefecture are a danger for art, and an attempt
on the dignity of men of sound mind.
Furthermore we have shown (see /' Action de I' Art of ist March
1913) that the museums, public buildings and churches bristle with
works no less realistic.
Thinkers, artists and writers owe it to themselves to stand up for
their rights and, beyond their rights, for the ideal of liberty. We there
fore trust that all will be anxious to sign our petition that the Oscar
WUde monument shall be respected.
LES COMPAGNONS DE INACTION DE L'ART
From Gil Bias, February 25, 1913:
THE ARTS
THE TOMB OF OSCAR WILDE
All who have had the opportunity of seeing the monument to Oscar
Wilde, and the sculptor Jacob Epstein in person, might well be-
258 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
lieve that the authorities have put an end to their prudish bickerings.
The monument was already placed in position awaiting only the date
of the unveiling, a ceremony that, hallowing the glory of a great poet,
would also bring a share of fame, and legitimately so, to an artist who
can be described as honest, hard-working, sensitive, and disinterested.
But not a bit of it. There seems no doubt that M. le Conservateur
du Pere Lachaise, who is using all his authority to oppose the accept
ance of the monument, does not want to accept his defeat.
The sculptor, Jacob Epstein, has just received a categorical demand
either to "correct" the anatomy of the allegorical personage dominat
ing the tomb, or to effect "at his own expense" removal of his work
with the least possible delay.
The artist, deeply discouraged, thinks of leaving France, and aban
doning his work, slowly conceived and fashioned with love, to the
fury of the governors of the cemetery, whose sense of modesty has
been so deeply offended.
It must be borne in mind that the authorities had already given
way, accepting after many difficulties,, but nevertheless accepting, the
monument by Jacob Epstein. Why then retract? How can this taking
back of the pledged word be justified? Who is it that is being prose
cuted? Jacob Epstein living, or Oscar Wilde in his tomb?
When unveiling the monument to Baudelaire at the Montparnasse
cemetery ten years ago, M. Armand Dayot recalled how the last of
the Aragos once opposed the acceptance for a national museum of a
portrait of Baudelaire, on which occasion he expressed himself in these
terms: "While I am alive never shall a portrait of this dangerous poet
disgrace the Luxembourg."
Apparently, M. le Conservateur du Pere Lachaise is jealous of the
laurels, interspersed with nettles, of the least famous of the Aragos.
M. Armand Dayot added: "But times have changed." We are inclined
to have our doubts about it.
An injunction is served on Jacob Epstein to remove a monument the
sight of which is liable to disturb in their meditations, the people 'who
have come to honour their dead.
What is there about this monument, graced with the figure of a sor
rowing sphinx, that is disturbing? Venturing to use the word, the
terrible word that shocks our paragons of virtue, we all confess that
THE TOMB OF OSCAR WILDE 259
this sphinx is not deprived of sex; this sex is even masculine. And then
what?
We have seen this monument and not once only; to discover this
terrible thing one has to crouch down and look from below, the sphinx
not occupying a standing but a semi-recumbent position.
Any normal person will readily agree that this work by Jacob
Epstein is quite incapable of disturbing persons wrapt in meditation.
Those who "see" will not have come to judge a work of art any more
than to honour the dead.
This story seems to belong to another age. Alas, it belongs to the
present day.
Knowing that on a previous occasion, and in these columns, we had
taken up the cudgels on behalf of Jacob Epstein, who loves his art,
who is loyal, who is poor and who is our guest, a group of artists called
on us yesterday and begged us to keep up the fight, to the end and to
victory, in the cause of the persecuted sculptor.
In die words of one of Jacob Epstein's colleagues, it is a case of
downright "attack." We do not think the word too strong and we
readily make use of it.
From U Action de VArt, March i, 1913:
CONCERNING THE OSCAR WILDE MONUMENT
AT PERE LACHAISE
In September 1912, the Prefect of Police had thought fit to postpone
the unveiling of the monument by Epstein to the memory of Oscar
Wilde until the artist had modified a certain realism in his work. The
Governor of the cemetery took exception to certain liberties taken by
the artist in his presentation of the angel crowning the monument. In
October all difficulties appeared to have been overcome and silence
reigned for a while over the tomb of the unhappy poet.
But now on the roth February le Prefet de la Seine chooses to revive
the question of morals once again by directing a "Ukase" to M. Robert
Ross, concessionaire for the tomb of Oscar Wilde.
Here is the document in full, for it reveals official hypocrisy in its
most sickening form:
2<5o LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
REPUBLIC
LlBERTE, EGALITi, FRATERNITY
PREFECTURE DU DEPARTMENT DE LA SEINE,
PARIS, loth February, 1913.
"SiR,
"On the concession you have acquired at the Paris cemetery du
Pere Lachaise for the burial of M. Oscar Wilde, there has been
erected a monument, the nature of which is liable to offend the sus
ceptibilities of certain families going to the necropolis to give them
selves up to meditation and to honour their dead.
"The competent department of my administration had requested
that certain modifications should be carried out; the sculptor, M.
Epstein, formerly refused to do so. On giving this matter their con
sideration, le Comit6 d'Esth6tique de la Prefecture de la Seine has just
passed a resolution that the monument cannot be allowed to remain in
its present state.
"In these circumstances I would request you to be good enough,
within the next fortnight, to make provision either for the modifica
tions to be carried out, in accordance with the request already made
to M. Epstein, or for the removal of the monument.
"In the event of your not complying with this request, I shall be
under the necessity of ordering the removal ex officio, at your cost,
risk and peril, by virtue of the powers conferred on me by Art. 16 of
the Decree of the 23 Prairial of the year XII.
"Yours truly,
"Le PrSfet de la Seine,
u A 1* r» i . r> r. "M. DELANNEY
"A. M. Robert Ross, Esq.,
13, Grosvenor Street,
London, W."
The only reason, then, for this attack on the purity of the nude and
on the most elementary rights, is the susceptibility of certain families,
a susceptibility which can be more precisely described as a morbid
sexual state.
No one with normal sexual equilibrium can take "offence" at the
symbol of virility. M. Delanney is pleading a case for a morbid state
of mind, but not by any means for a moral right.
THE TOMB OF OSCAR WILDE 261
The simple nudity of an organ is not an attack on public modesty,
How comes the Prefet de la Seine, in his bureaucratic ignorance, to
believe that in a place devoted to worship, it is not permissible to pre
sent the human organ of reproduction? For that, when all is said
and done, is the only reason for this prohibition. Clearly the clients of
M. Delanney must be Breton or Spanish Catholics— barbarians— who
can only see with the eyes of sin,
I ask you to take a walk under the vault of the Sixtine where the
Clergy, the creators of all morals, give themselves up to meditation to
honour their God. There you will see the generative organ of Adam
and of the saints, depicted strong and beautiful with great realism, yes,
even on the very altar-piece.
Who has ever protested against the erotic attitudes of the satyrs and
nymphs who form a ring on the tomb of Pollapjuolo, in the Chapel
of the Holy Sacrament at Saint Pierre, against the licence of the mosa
ics of San Marco in Venice or against the realism of the bas-reliefs in
the Cathedral of Orvieto, or the grotesque exaggerations of the gar
goyles of Gothic cathedrals?
Where is the logic or the justice of the Prefet de la Seine, when he
is set on destroying a nude figure in a cemetery while he tolerates other
nude figures in public buildings and places and even in other ceme
teries?
It is nothing more than a prejudice inspired by Lepine-le-Ludibond
under the cloak of the Jesuitical good behaviour of anonymous aes
thetes. M. Delanney has signed a document which, in its spirit and
form, belongs to the Holy Office.
We strongly oppose any alteration to the monument of Oscar
Wilde. Public susceptibility, protected by Article 16 of the Decree of
the 23 Prairial of the year XII, is a respectable thing, but liberty in
Art and in life must be untouchable.
From V Action de VArt, April i, 1913:
FOR THE LIBERTY OF ART
A PROTEST REGARDING THE OSCAR WILDE MONUMENT
OUR PETITION
In taking the initiative to get up a petition in favour of the Oscar
Wilde monument, we have in mind not only to defend the fine work
262 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
of the sculptor Epstein—who, incidentally has entrusted this task to
the Frangais d'avant garde—but it has appeared to us of great moment
to make clear to artists, writers and thinkers that this outrage has
implications that go further than what is, and what is not, fit in Art,
and to point out to them that, following on others that have been
allowed to pass neglected, it imperils the very principle of the liberty
of Art, and, as a corollary to this principle, the respect due to the
dignity of all men of sound mind.
Such are the points that inspire our campaign.
So far as this work of Epstein is concerned, the well informed article
of our friend ATL followed by the photographic reproduction of this
work in our previous issue, will have proved to all who have eyes to
see, the inane nature of the official accusation.
The masons who laughed when the monument arrived were nothing
if not servile to the imagination of M. le Conservateur, the author of
all the trouble. For in this ridiculous affair, there has never been any
thing more than a question of imagination, altogether insufficient to
justify the ostracism by the prefecture. If the world is to be regarded
through such spectacles, then nothing chaste is left on this earth and
anything can become a pretext for morbid excitement. But this belongs
to the domain of pure pathology.
Without at this stage touching on the principle of the liberty of
art, which no doubt is a matter of indifference to the members of the
Comit6 d'Esth6tique de la Pr6fecture de la Seine, we would put to the
public authorities the question whether the natural dignity of men of
sound mind, who would be disgusted by such obscenities, is not at the
very least as respectable as that unwholesome state of mind left behind
by a thousand years of Jesuitical upbringing and so charitably described
in the ultimatum of the loth February as "the susceptibilities of cer
tain families." Perhaps it is fitting to feel pity for these poor creatures
who see sin in everything; but would they not be best cared for by
familiarising them with the sight of this human body made in the image
of God, of that God whom they fear to defile by letting their impure
eyes rest on the likeness most identical with his Own?
«»>••* •
That there should exist in a Republic modelled on Athens, people
invested with official powers ready to give ear to such nonsense seems
u
7}
o
w
s
o
H
W
ffi
H
THE TOMB OF OSCAR WILDE 263
to us a contradiction fraught with disaster. But by the very fact that
we live under the most Athenian of the Republics we cannot doubt but
that the opinion of the literary and artistic world has some right to
make itself heard and that as it alone is the competent judge in such
matters will end up by sweeping it away.
The status of the signatories alone makes the success of our petition
assured; and it will be much more so if all those artists who are anxious
to protect their rights will take the trouble to inform us. In the mean
time, we must thank those who were first to sign.
Among those who in the past have been persecuted and who are
therefore in a position to appreciate the authority which the official
bodies can bring to bear in matters of this kind we would mention:
LUCIEN DESCAVES, who writes that he deeply regrets not being in
Paris to sign our petition personally.
WILLETTE— made a special trip from Montmartre to Pere Lachaise; he
is wholeheartedly with us and indignant with this Governor who is so
concerned about the susceptibilities of which the reader has been told
and who is responsible for the mutilation of the statue of a nude child
which forms part of the Spuller monument. We, too, saw this mutila
tion a few days ago.
CHARLES-HENRY HIRSCH— does not know the sculpture of Epstein,
but he is intensely suspicious of the decisions of a Comite d'Esthetique
de la Prefecture de la Seine.
Further, G. H. ROSNY, senior, to whom we are glad to give the
only photograph in our possession of the monument, still under the
tarpaulin, tells us that he finds this bas-relief horribly chaste, and adds
his signature to that of PAUL-NAPOLEON ROINARD, always ready to
make a stand against all ostracism. HANS RYNER, whose stoic smile
became tinged with pity as he said "poor people"; PAUL FORT* that
subtle prince of letters; R£MY DE GOURMONT who sent us the follow
ing lines:—
"I ask you to make free use of my name in defence of this monu
ment, in which I can see no harm. On the contrary, the figure is an
unusual one and I imagine that the reason for the official displeasure
is its originality. A mediocre 'genT would have got away with any
thing. It is the same with literature. The commonplace is the saving
grace.
264 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
"I protest as you do; but there are so many things at which one
could protest. Protest by all means, since you still have faith in pro
tests. I am with you but, sad to relate, without any illusions. Stupidity
is stronger than we are."
As ADRIEN REMACLE, the author and perfect poet, so aptly puts it:
"The Prefect of Police, the State, the King have received from us
no mission to act as Art critics This official interference in con
nection with a monument is odious besides being out of place."
But the space in these pages would be quite inadequate for the inser
tion of all die letters we have received.
In this age when the just gods are deaf, it is only men who unite
their voices into a formidable outcry, who can have any chance of
being heard. That is why this assembly of the elite for the greatest of
causes becomes more than a necessity, it becomes a point of honour. It
would have been a sad day if artists had shown themselves indiff erent
to what superhuman effort has accomplished in their domain. There is
in the liberty of Art, as we know it in our day, a large inheritance of
conquests painfully won over stupidity and which it is of the greatest
importance to preserve.
When one reflects that Art is the sole domain to which man can
escape from the determinism that yokes him to the beast, the defence
of everything appertaining to Art must be one of the most sacred
duties of all cultured minds.
The claims on us for the abolition of poverty are urgent, the claims
in the interest of industry and commerce are ... respectable?
but the claims of the Ideal are the only ones that ennoble our existence.
And it would be a scandal of scandals were the authorities to become
stubbornly determined about this eccentric and barbarous susceptibility
of certain families, the very same that drives child-mothers to infanti
cide, throws on the streets servants who have known love, and which,
meting out its everyday share of death and prostitution in this fashion,
now comes to blaspheme that which forms the consolation of our lives,
the Destiny of Art and the Genius of Thought.
But the public authorities cannot much longer hesitate between the
protection of Christian vice and the preservation of the highest pre
rogative of the human mind.
BANVILLE D'HOSTEL
THE TOMB OF OSCAR WILDE 265
To the Prefect of the Seine.
From Comoedia j March 21, 1913:
A PETITION BY ARTISTS FOR THE LIBERTY OF ART
A certain number of- writers and artists, contributors to Y Action *
(FArt, have just proposed that a great petition be drawn up by work
ers with the pen, brush and chisel as a protest against the outrage on
the liberty of Art contained in the decision of the Prefet de la Seine
and of his Comite d'Esthetique regarding the Oscar Wilde monument
at Pere Lachaise.
This protest cannot pass unnoticed. In France, the land of Liberty
and of Art, where the voice of the public has so often been raised with
success against the acts of the Philistines, it behooves us to renew the
movement of 1896, "the epoch of flaming lists and signatures"— I am
quoting Ernest Lajeunesse— "the time when M. Octave Mirbeau con
templated appointing The Prisoner of Reading Gaol' to a promising
chair at the Academic Goncourt, after M. Maurice Barres had refused
a ticket for a ball to Lord Alfred Douglas. Salome was being played,
and it later went on tour with Georges Vanor. The Portrait of Dorian
Gray was hastily translated and the Revue Bleue published the two
admirable articles by Regnier and by Paul Adam."
Today it is not from the clutches of English judges that Oscar Wilde
has to be wrested but from the Hypocrisy that is holding his "Geni"
a prisoner.
Following my article of the 9th October last in Comoedia under
the title "Oscar Wilde, Prisoner of the Prefecture de la Seine," Jacob
Epstein, the sculptor of the monument, wrote me the following letter
and my only reason for including those passages too flattering to my
self, is that they convey a mission:
"DEAR GEORGES BAZILE,
"Thank you for your article in Comoedia. I must sail at once for
South Africa where I have to carve some figures of lions in granite for
Pretoria in the Transvaal. I have signed a contract and promised to
go where my work awaits me.
"After having seen your courageous attack in Comoedia, I can leave
this hemisphere with an easier mind.
266 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
"I leave it to Frenchmen like yourself to defend my work and the
repose of the great soul who rests beneath it.
"You can do it better than I ever could. I find my expression in a
different material.
"My works must speak for me.
"JACOB EPSTEIN"
"I leave it to Frenchmen like yourself to defend my work." It there
fore devolves on us to rise up and protest again and again and to make
our voices heard in the cause of justice.
Besides, the question is not confined to the banned monument. The
affair of the Oscar Wilde monument, is in fact only an incident. There
is something else. There is an attack on the liberty of Art. The person
ality of the author of Salome is beside the point, the religion or the
nationality of the sculptor likewise, and likewise any personal views on
the aesthetic quality of the monument, etc. etc.
Here is the text of the protest drawn up by the associates of T Action
d'Art:
". . . With the monument to Oscar Wilde it is the very principle
of liberty for Axt that is threatened. For this principle Charles Baude
laire, Gustave Flaubert, Catulle Mendes, Jean Richepin, Paul Adam,
Lucien Descaves, Charles-Henry Hirsch, Steinlen, Forain, Louis
Legrand, Willette, Poulbot, Grand] ean, Delannoy, etc have not
shrunk from the rigours of the law.
"The interdictions of the Pr6fecture are a danger for art and an
attack on the dignity of men of sound mind. . . .
"Thinkers, artists and writers owe it to themselves to protect their
rights and, beyond their rights, their ideal of liberty. We therefore
trust that all will be anxious to sign our petition that the monument
of Oscar Wilde shall be respected."
The signatures are already numerous. Precious support is coming
from all sides. The petition must be general. There must be no absten
tions. All personal grudges, all private quarrels must be wiped out in
the presence of this movement in favor of liberty for art. Signatures
will be received at P Action d'Art, 47, Rue de la Gaiet6.
GEORGES BAZILE
THE TOMB OF OSCAR WILDE 267
From Comoedia, April 23, 1913:
THE TOMB OF OSCAR WILDE
Even though M. Banville d'Hostel, director of V Action d'Art does
not do me the honour of including me among "the most prominent
writers, poets and artists,"— as he puts it; and though, in the company
of M. Archipenko, Lecornu, Belisario and the ubiquitous Andre Arny-
velde of the modified Hebrew patronymic, this shepherd of pastoral
rhyme regards me as an intruder, I nevertheless note with satisfaction
the condemnation that has found voice against, and is so richly deserved
by, the Prefecture de la Seine, from the lowest of its Jacks-in-Office
to the august personage of M. le Prefet himself, for its dull stupidity
and sickening hypocrisy.
The reader knows the facts. A sculptor, Jacob Epstein, who in no
wise pretends to be a rival to Denys Puech or Antonin Mercie,
modelled a figure to honor the sad memory of Oscar Wilde, the beauty
of which is not called in question. Is this work by M. Epstein worth a
chip from the chisel of Pierre Puget or of Rodin? "Do you only play
the violin like Paganini?" asks Ducantal.
On this point the art critics— infallible as everyone knows— will pass
judgment as soon as they, and with them the public, are allowed to see
this piece of sculpture. But that is exactly where all the trouble lies.
The pontiffs of the Prefecture, together with their minions and Jacks-
in-Office, are preventing this work from seeing the light of day, under
the pretext that it shamelessly shows the human form, which should
be kept from the public eye because of the untold tortures it would
inflict on its sense of modesty. How insane! How cowardly! A thread
bare argument that will not hold water. But it is good enough for prac
tical purposes, still serving as a weapon to wield against those men of
independent mind who will not conform to the opinions of the con
cierge, and against those emancipated artists who refuse to butter their
work to the taste of officialdom and turn out "decorative" sculpture,
so-called because it unquestionably aggravates the ugliness— so charac
teristic—of the blanc-mange buildings that lend this officialdom support.
Virtue is a good pretext. This manoeuvre, which consists of feigning
a ridiculous indignation at the sight of the nude body of a man or of
a woman, is designed surreptitiously to bring into bad repute rivals,
268 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
competitors, men of superior quality. The defence of morals, of "prin
ciples," is designed to sharpen a weapon that helps the spurious talents
to ruin the genuine ones, to single out for honorary posts and orders
so many yes-men who only work to the narrow letter of instructions
and merely aim at satisfying the meddling ignorance of the bourgeois.
These standards of public morals are, in France (and even elsewhere)
of recent importation; they date back no further than to the invasion
of the middle classes and the triumph of the Third State. They prop
erly belong to democratic stupidity.
The Vicomte Sosthene de la Rochefoucauld, celebrated for having,
under the Restoration, introduced the bustle and placed obscene plas
ters on antique statues, scored a success of undying laughter. He was
ridiculed for his mock piety and stupidity. For prudish, deceitful and
servile to hypocrisy and false values, as was the transitory world from
which Balzac took his models, a piece of stupidity such as this, could
not but shock the good manners it still retained, and its patrician habit
of looking things in the face, and calling a spade a spade.
The far-fetched idea of "moralising" to the plastic arts could only
have occurred to shopkeepers in a state of unsound mind, and strung
to the stilted tune of "la Vache a Colas" by the influence of protes
tantism in France. The sociologists who speak of the Jewish "Conquest"
are glad to omit mention of this other conquest, the conquest of the
Huguenots, that invasion of the sanctimonious hypocrites, so well
calculated to reduce to complete flabbiness what the public newspapers
describe as the national spirit. No, not even the imagination of the
Jesuits could have run to such ridiculous nonsense. They confined
themselves to the "expurgation" of Horace and to watering down the
ancient poets. The volumes of "ad usum d61phini" satisfied their
vandalism. They would not have carried their meddling to the point
of practising on the marbles of Versailles or of the Vatican the opera
tion that added to the list of the heretics the author of "Philosopho-
mena." The Republic of course only has smiles, favours and gracious-
ness for those sycophants who demand in the name of public morals
(of which they are the agents) the sequestration of a true work of art.
And this, mind you, while parents take their offspring to the theatre,
the cinema, and here, there and everywhere, even to the unclean caf6-
concert, at hours when children should be in bed; while young urchins
read the newspapers bristling with adulteries, rape, lascivious and vio-
THE TOMB OF OSCAR WILDE 269
lent scenes, vulgar debauchery and blood and thunder, with illustra
tions to boot; while footballers, boxers, sprinters, and other intellec
tuals display in full sight of the heiresses of the middle classes, out in
the open Bois de Boulogne and the track of the velodrome, all that
Nature endowed them with. The modern young things have known
for a long time that babies do not come out of the blue carried by
storks. And if one considers the filthy talk that is carried on among
themselves, by the pupils of the RP. as well as by those at the Uni
versity, it will take some effort to understand the reason for all this
display of fig-leaves. Is anyone being deceived? No one disputes the
complete harmlessness of works of art, except the aged Berenger,
whose senility, without any doubt, has to endure the obsessions of
an anchorite in the desert, and who— dare I say so— indulges in exhibi
tionism by counteraction. One can even go so far as to say, without
risking anything more than shocking people with red-tape intellects,
that pornography itself is not the danger it is supposed to be. Show me
a man, a young woman, anyone you like, really corrupted or perverted
by indecent books or pictures. Those who might be tempted by these
lying, ugly and stupid portrayals of voluptuousness, will fall a prey-
make no mistake about it— to more immediate temptations, to more
tangible realities of which the street, the college, the boarding-school
and the family itself are continually giving them glimpses.
It seems reasonable to suppose that in prohibiting the monument of
Oscar Wilde, the Pharisees of the Prefecture mean to inflict yet an
other slur on the memory of the poet. On both sides of the Channel,
there is not lacking, when genius is crucified, scribes and Sadducees
to add thorns to its crown.
It is sweet honey to the failures, to the lice of literature, to the
scum of journalism, it is sweet and refreshing, to insult one who, from
so far on high, scorned them, when he in his turn succumbs, a victim
of the passions which made his voice ring clear and his art persuasive.
It is so easy to speak in the name of principles and of morals! Yes,
easier than to write a line of prose or a distich, easier, let us say,
than to have talent.
Unhappy Oscar Wilde, so triumphant at Stephane Mallarme's, ter
rifying the young poets with his dandyism, his loves, his Pre-Raphaelite
27o LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
cravats, and his sun-flowers. An "Esthete," he brought with him a
singular taste, an affectation in clothes in the manner of the primitive
Lombards or Florentines. One will never know what Ruskin con
tributed to his compatriots by way of seraphic waistcoats and robes
of a pomme verte or lemon colour.
Oscar Wilde delivered himself of his paradoxes in a voice that was
calm and rhythmic. He posed with the easy insolence of a Brummel
or of a Sheridan, he posed as Jean Lorain would have wished to pose.
But Jean Lorain was, in spite of d'Anteros, nothing more than a
provincial.
Then came the horrible adventure, the collapse, the hard labour,
the unleashing of the hyenas and the asses, the poet succumbing a
victim of his own pride, a pride that was English, of an arrogance
superior to destiny. He could have fled from the shameful vengeance
of the Marquis of Queensbury but he preferred to defy his enemy,
to face him out to the end. This greatness of soul should have touched
the hearts of the inquisitors. It could not turn aside the verdict of
twelve Anglican grocers. The rest is well known, the prison, the re
turn to Paris, the fall of this phantom wandering among the haunts
of his defunct glory. We also know the ignominious behaviour of
the contemptible cowards and hypocrites whom he had once helped
and obliged, and who, now, did not recognise him. Death, the con
soler, did not tarry long. Wilde, it is said, brought it on, himself, and
died poisoned by his own hands.
To crown his posthumous glory, it was only necessary that he
should be persecuted, proscribed in efHgy and sequestrated by bureau
cratic hypocrisy, by the stupidity of Jacks-in-Office. Nevertheless, it
is not unreasonable to suppose that the name, glorious as it may be
of Le Pr6fet de la Seine, will be more forgotten than a Pharaoh of
the twenty-fourth dynasty when humanity of the future, with tears
of pity, and transports of gratitude, recites that sublime plaint, "The
Ballad of Reading Gaol."
LAURENT TAILHADE
APPENDIX III
"Mr. Epstein and the Critics"
by T. E. Hulme
From the New Age, December 25, 1913:
I begin with an apology. All through this article I write about Mr.
Epstein's work in a way which I recognise is wrong, in that it is what
an artist would call literary. The appreciation of a work of art must
be plastic or nothing. But I defend myself in this way, that I am not
so much writing directly about Mr. Epstein's work, as engaged in
the more negative and quite justifiable business of attempting to pro
tect the spectator from certain prejudices which are in themselves
literary. This is an article then not so much on Epstein as on his
critics. When I see the critics attempting to corrupt the mind of the
spectator and trying to hinder their appreciation of a great artist, I
feel an indignation which must be my excuse for these clumsy, hur
riedly-written and unrevised notes.
An attack on critics could not have a better subject matter than
the Press notices on Mr. Epstein's show. They exhibit a range and
variety of fatuousness seldom equalled. It is not necessary to spend
any time over notices which, like that of "GB." in the Athenaeum,
are merely spiteful, or that in the Illustrated London News, which
compared him unfavourably with the Exhibition of Humorous Artists.
I propose rather to deal with those which, in appearance, at any rate,
profess to deal seriously with his work.
Take first the merely nervous. Their method is continually to refer
to Mr. Epstein as a great artist and at the same time to deplore every
thing he does. It reminds one of the old philosophical disputes about
271
LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
substance. Would anything remain of a "thing" if all its qualities were
taken away? What is the metaphysical nature of an artist's excellence
that seems to manifest itself in no particular thing he does? The truth
is, of course, that they dare not say what they really think. The par
ticular kind of gift which enables a man to be an art critic is not the
possession of an instinct which tells them what pictures are good or
bad, but of a different kind of instinct which leads them to recognise
the people who do know. This is, of course, in itself a comparatively
rare instinct. Once they have obtained a "direction" in this way, their
own literary capacity enables them to expand it to any desired length.
You can, however, always tell this from a certain emptiness in their
rhetoric (cf. Arthur Symons' article on Rodin). There is no one to
give them a "direction" about Mr. Epstein's drawings, and they are at
a loss. They seek refuge in praise of the "Romilly John," which has
been universally admitted to be one of the finest bronzes since the
Renaissance.
I come now to the most frequent and the most reasonable criticism;
that directed against the "Carvings in Flenite." It is generally stated
in a rather confused way, but I think that it can be analysed oftt into
two separate prejudices. The first is that an artist has no business to
use formulae taken from another civilisation. The second is that, even
if the formula the artist uses is the natural means of expressing cer
tain of his emotions, yet these emotions must be unnatural in him, a
modern Western. I shall attempt to show that the first objection really
has its root in the second, and that this second prejudice is one which
runs through almost every activity at the present time. These "Carv
ings in Flenite," we are told, are "deliberate imitations of Easter Island
carvings." This seems to me to depend on a misconception of the
nature of formulae. Man remaining constant, there are certain broad
ways in which certain emotions must, and will always naturally be
expressed, and these we must call formulae. They constitute a constant
and permanent alphabet. The thing to notice is that the use of these
broad formulae has nothing to do with the possession of or lack of
individuality in the artist. That comes out in the way the formulae
are used. If I or the King of the Zulus want to walk, we both put one
leg before the other; that is the universal formula, but there the
resemblance ends. To take another illustration, which I don't want
to put forward as literally true, but which I only use for purpose of
"MR. EPSTEIN AND THE CRITICS" 273
illustration. A certain kind of nostalgia and attenuated melancholy is
expressed in Watteau by a formula of tall trees and minute people,
and a certain use of colour (I am also aware that he got this feeling,
in the Gilles, for example, by a quite other formula, but I repeat I am
only giving a sort of hypothetical illustration). It would be quite pos
sible at the present day for a painter, wishing to express the same kind
of emotion, to use the same broad formula quite naturally, and with
out any imitation of Watteau. The point is, that given the same emo
tion, the same broad formula comes naturally to the hands of any
people in any century.
I have wandered into this by-path merely to find therein an illus
tration which will help us to understand the repugnance of the critic
to the "Carvings in Flenite." It is, says the critic, "rude savagery,
flouting respectable tradition-vague memories of dark ages as distant
from modern feeling as the loves of the Martians." Modern feeling be
damned! As if it was not the business of every honest man at the
present moment to clean the world of these sloppy dregs of the
Renaissance. This carving, by an extreme abstraction, by the selection
of certain lines, gives an effect of tragic greatness. The important point
about this is that the tragedy is of an order more intense than any
conception of life. This, I think, is the real root of the objection to
these statues, that they express emotions which are, as a matter of fact,
entirely alien and unnatural to the critic. But that is a very different
thing from their being unnatural to the artist. My justification of
these statues would be then (i) that an alien formula is justifiable
when it is the necessary expression of a certain attitude; and (2) that
in the peculiar conditions in which we find ourselves, which are really
the breaking up of an era, it has again become quite possible for people
here and there to have the attitude expressed by these formulae.
I have dealt with these in rather a literary way, because I think that
in this case it is necessary to get semi-literary prejudices out of the
way, before the carvings can be seen as they should be seen, i.e., plas
tically.
To turn now to the drawings which have been even more misunder
stood by the critics than the carvings. I only want to make a few
necessary notes about these, as I am dealing with them at greater
length in an essay elsewhere. I need say very little about the mag
nificent drawing reproduced in this paper, for it stands slightly apart
274 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
from the others and seems to have been found intelligible even by the
critics. I might, perhaps, say something about the representative ele
ment in it— a man is working a Rock Drill mounted on a tripod, the
lines of which, in the drawing, continue the lines of his legs. The two
lines converging on the centre of the design are indications of a
rocky landscape. It is the other drawings which seem to have caused
the most bewildered criticism; they have been called prosaic repre
sentations of anatomical details, "medical drawings," and so on. It is
perfectly obvious that they are not that. What prevents them being
understood as expressions of ideas is quite a simple matter. People
will admire the "Rock Drill," because they have no preconceived
notion as to how the thing expressed by it should be expressed. But
with the other drawings concerned with birth the case is different.
Take for example the drawing called "Creation," a baby seen inside
many folds. I might very roughly say that this was a non-sentimental
restatement of an idea which, presented sentimentally and in the tra
ditional manner they would admire— an idea something akin to the
"Christmas crib" idea. If a traditional symbol had been used they would
have been quite prepared to admire it. They cannot understand that
the genius and sincerity of an artist lies in extracting afresh, from
outside reality, a new means of expression. It seems curious that the
people who in poetry abominate clich6s and know that Nature, as it
were, presses in on the poet to be used as metaphor, cannot understand
the same thing when it occurs plastically. They seem unable to under
stand that an artist who has something to say will continually "extract"
from reality new methods of expression, and that these being per
sonally felt will inevitably lack prettiness and will differ from tradi
tional clich6s. It may also be pointed out that the critics have prob
ably themselves not been accustomed to think about generation, and
so naturally find the drawings not understandable. I come now to
the stupidest criticism of aU, that of Mr. Ludovici. It would prob
ably occur to anyone who read Mr. Ludovici's article that he was
a charlatan, but I think it worth while confirming this impression by
further evidence. His activities are not confined to art. I remember
coming across his name some years ago as the author of a very
comical little book on Nietzsche, which was sent me for review.
I shall devote some space to him here then, not because I consider
him of the slightest importance, but because I consider it a duty, a
"MR. EPSTEIN AND THE CRITICS" 275
very pleasant duty and one very much neglected in this country, to
expose charlatans when one sees them. Apart from this general ground,
the book on Nietzsche is worth considering, for it displays the same
type of mind at work as in the article on art.
What, very briefly then, is the particular type of charlatan revealed
in this book on Nietzsche? It gave one the impression of a little
Cockney intellect which would have been more suitably employed
indexing or in a lawyer's office, drawn by a various kind of vanity
into a region the realities of which must for ever remain incompre
hensible to him. Mr. Ludovici, writing on Nietzsche, might be com
pared to a child of four in a theatre watching a tragedy based on
adultery. The child would observe certain external phenomena, but as
to the real structure of the tragedy, its real moving forces, it would
naturally be rather hazy. You picture then a spruce little mind that
has crept into the complicated rafters of philosophy— you imagine him
perplexed, confused— you would be quite wrong, the apperceptive sys
tem acts like a stencil, it blots out all the complexity which forms the
reality of the subject, so that he is simply unaware of its existence.
He sees only what is akin to his mind's manner of working, as dogs
out for a walk only scent other dogs, and as a Red Indian in a great
town for the first time sees only the horses. While thus in reality
remaining entirely outside the subject, he can manage to produce a
shoddy imitation which may pass here in England, where there is
no organised criticism by experts, but which in other countries, less
happily democratic in these matters, would at once have been char
acterised as a piece of fudge. I have only drawn attention to this in
order to indicate the particular type of charlatan we have to deal
with, so that you may know what to expect when you come to con
sider him as an art critic. I want to insist on the fact that you must
expect to find a man dealing with a subject which is in reality alien
to him, ignorant of the aims of the actors in that subject and yet
maintaining an appearance of adequate treatment with the help of a
few tags.
That a man should write stupid and childish things about Nietzsche
does not perhaps matter very much; after all, we can read him for
ourselves. But when a little bantam of this kind has the impertinence
to refer to Mr. Epstein as a "minor personality— of no interest to
him," then the matter becomes so disgusting that it has to be dealt with.
276 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
The most appropriate means of dealing with him would be a little
personal violence. By that method one removes a nuisance without
drawing more attention to it than its insignificance deserves. But the
unworthy sentiment of pity for the weak, which, in spite of Nietzsche,
still moves us, prevents us dealing drastically with this rather light
weight superman. To deal definitely then with his criticism. He dis
missed Mr. Epstein with the general principle, "Great art can only
appear when the artist is animated by the spirit of some great order
or scheme of life." I agree with this. Experience confirms it. We find
that the more serious kind of art that one likes sprang out of organic
societies like the Indian, Egyptian and Byzantine. The modern ob
viously imposes too great a strain on an artist, the, double burden of
not only expressing something, but of finding something in himself to
be expressed. The more organic society effects an economy in this.
Moreover, you might go so far as to say that the imposition of definite
forms does not confine the artist but rather has the effect of intensi
fying the individuality of his work (of Egyptian portraits). I agree then
with his general principle: we all agree. It is one of those obvious
platitudes which all educated people take for granted, in conversation
and in print. It seems almost too comic for belief, but I begin to
suspect from Mr. Ludovici's continued use of the word "I" in con
nection with this principle, that he is under the extraordinary hallu
cination that the principle is a personal discovery of his own. Really,
Mr. Ludo, you mustn't teach your grandmother to suck eggs in this
way. That you should have read of these truths in a book and have
seen that they were true is so much to the good. It is a fact of great
interest to your father and mother, it shows that you are growing
up; but I can assure you it is a matter of no public interest.
Admitting then, as I do, that the principle is true, I fail to see how
it enables Mr. Ludovici to dismiss Mr. Epstein, in the way he -does,
on a priori grounds. The same general principle would enable us to
dismiss every artist since the Renaissance. Take two very definite
examples, Michelangelo and Blake, neither of whom expressed any
general "scheme of life," imposed on them by society, but "exalted
the individual angle of vision of minor personalities."
The whole thing is entirely beside the point. The business of an
art critic is not to repeat tags, but to apply them to individual works
of art. But of course that is precisely what a charlatan of the kind
"MR. EPSTEIN AND THE CRITICS" 277
I have just described cannot do. It is quite possible for him in each
gallery he goes to, to find some opportunity of repeating his tags,
but when (as he was in his book on Nietzsche) he is entirely outside
the subject, when he is really unaware of the nature of the thing
which artists are trying to do, when he gets no real fun out of the
pictures themselves, then, when he is pinned down before one actual
picture and not allowed to wiggle away, he must either be dumb or
make an ass of himself. It is quite easy to learn to repeat tags about
"balance," but put the man before one picture and make him follow,
with his finger, the lines which constitute that "balance" and he can
only shufile and bring out more tags.
That a critic of this calibre should attempt to patronise Mr. Epstein
is disgusting. I make this very hurried protest in the hope that I may
induce those people who have perhaps been prejudiced by ignorant
and biased criticism to go and judge for themselves.
APPENDIX IV
The Statue of Christ
I quote a part of Father Bernard Vaughan's article in the Graphic
for February 14, 1920, After a long prelude he begins:
Since Cimabue's day till our own Holman Hunt's sculptors and
artists have followed the traditional idea about the features and ex
pression of our Divine Lord. No artist, not even the saintly Fra
Angelico, dared to innovate upon what was handed down as the em
bodiment, as far as might be, of the Divine character which has been
revealed to us by tradition and in the Gospel stories. Any "portrait"
of Our Lord that fails to express tenderness, dignity, calmness and
sweetness, with overwhelming majesty— in a word, any so-called "like
ness" which does not manifest a countenance in which are united an
expression intensely human, yet altogether Divine, must be ruthlessly
set aside as sinning against the canons of correct taste and as running
counter to the conceptions which even Non-Christians, as well as
Christians, have formed of the unique character of Jesus Christ.
Listen to this consensus of opinion with regard to Christ's surpassing
goodness and greatness. Before Him Kant feels constrained to bow as
"the Ideal of perfection"; in Him Hegel sees "the union of the Divine
and the Human"; in Him again, Spinoza recognises "the symbol of
Divine Wisdom." To the scoffing Renan Jesus Christ "is the most
beautiful Incarnation of God in the most beautiful of human forms."
Of Him Napoleon said, "I know men. I tell you Jesus Christ was not
a mere man." To the German Strauss, Our Lord "is the brightest
object we can possibly imagine with respect to religion, the Being
without whose presence in the mind perfect piety is impossible." To
278
THE STATUE OF CHRIST 279
Lecky, our British historian, Jesus Christ is "the highest pattern of
virtue and the strongest incentive to its practice," while to John
Stuart Mill, Christ "is charged with a special express and unique mis
sion from God to lead mankind to truth and virtue."
With this established tradition, profane as well as sacred, literary
as well as artistic, about the pre-eminent character and riveting per
sonality of Jesus Christ, one could not, in wildest dreams, imagine any
self-respecting artist to quarrel, still less to be so insolent as to strike
out of metal a figure of the Risen Christ in which neither the man
in the street nor the normal artist can discover any redeeming feature.
Yet this has been done, and the painful result may be seen in Mr.
Epstein's work, which is at present being exhibited at the Leicester
Galleries, Leicester Square.
I have stood in front and at the back elevation of this gross and
grotesque thing, with nose turned up and feet turned in; I have stood
on the right and the left of this offending and hurting caricature; I
have studied the unshapely head, the receding brow, the thick lips,
the untipped nose, the uncanny eyes, the poorly built body, with its
ugly feet and uglier hands, till I felt ready to cry out with indigna
tion that in this Christian England there should be exhibited the figure
of a Christ which suggested to me some degraded Chaldean or African,
which wore the appearance of an Asiatic-American or Hun- Jew, which
reminded me of some emaciated Hindu, or a badly grown Egyptian
swathed in the cerements of the grave. I call it positively wicked and
insulting to perpetrate such a travesty of the Risen Christ and to
invite a Christian people, to whom the Founder of Christianity is
the Man-God, to come and admire it.
Who is the man who, standing in presence of this shapeless speci
men of humanity, could imagine coming from its brutally thick throat
the words, "I am the Light of the World"; or "I am the Way and
the Truth and the Life"; or "I am the Resurrection and the Life";
or, lastly, "I am thy reward exceeding great"?
Someone has observed that if a hero were to come into a room,
we should stand up and acclaim him, and if Christ should cross the
threshold we should kneel down and revere Him; but let me add,
if Mr. Epstein's horror in bronze were to spring into life and appear
in a room, I for one should fly from it in dread and disgust, lest per
haps he might pick my pockets, or worse, do some deed of violence
z8o LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
in keeping with his Bolshevik appearance. As I came out of the gal
lery I noticed that Mr. Epstein's statue stands near a certain type of
shop round about Leicester Square. Whoever should succeed in sweep
ing such shops and such "art" into the Thames, to be carried out to
sea and lost for ever, would do something to vindicate Christian
morality and save us from the reproach of utter Pagan profligacy
in our mammoth metropolis.
It is difficult to beat this for vilification, and it must be re
membered that Father Bernard Vaughan, known as "A preacher
of Mayfair" who castigated the "Sins of Society," was following
out his role of modern Savonarola. Bernard Shaw undertook the
answer to the reverend father the following week in the Graphic,
and I reproduce his letter:
Father Vaughan is an unlucky man. He has a genius for mistaking
his profession. The war tore off his cassock and revealed the spurs,
the cartridge belt, the khaki beneath. And now that he is demobilised,
his wandering star leads him into the profession of art critic.
When I was last at Lourdes I saw a cinema representation of the
Passion. I think that Christ would have pleased Father Vaughan. He
looked like a very beautiful operatic tenor. I have seen Victor Capoul
and the late Lord Battersea; and he was as Christ-like (in Father
Vaughan's sense) as both of them rolled into one. He was more the
gentleman than the Christ of Oberammergau, who was in private life
a wood-carver. The Church is so powerful at Lourdes that I do not
think this exhibition would have been possible without its approval.
That the approval was obtained is not to be wondered at. The Church
knows its business at Lourdes. And the cinema actor knew his business,
which was to study the most popular pictures of Christ, and to repro
duce their subjects in his own person with the aid of his make-up
box. He purchased the ambrosial curls and the eyebrows, and put
them on with spirit gum. If his nose was not the right shape, he built
it up with plastic material. The result was very pretty, and quite
satisfactory to those whose ideal Christ is a stage lover. I did not care
for it myself. The stage has no illusions (of that sort) for me; and I
feel quite sure that Christ was no more like a modern opera singer
than he was Uke Henry Dubb, the modern carpenter.
PQ
O
O
fc
THE STATUE OF CHRIST 281
Now that Father Vaughan is going in for art, many terrible shocks
await him. Imagine him in Bruges, looking at the Christs of the Nether-
land school (he can see some, by the way, in the National Gallery).
He will almost forgive Mr. Epstein when he sees how Dierick Bouts
and Hans Memling and Gerard David made Christ a plain, troubled,
common man. Or he may go to Tunbridge Wells and walk to Speld-
hurst Church, where he will see a magnificent Morris stained window
in which Burne- Jones, departing utterly from the convention which
he himself had so often exploited, made the figure on the cross a
glorious Greek God. Michael Angelo did the same in his Last Judg
ment. Holman Hunt, after representing The Light of the World as
an excessively respectable gentleman with a trim beard and a jewelled
lantern, knocking at a door with the gesture of a thief in the night,
lived to be reviled by the Vaughans of his day for representing Him
in "The Shadow of the Cross" as a Syrian-actually as a Syrian Jew
instead of an Oxford graduate. Raphael's unique Christ in his Trans
figuration is a Tyrolese peasant. Rembrandt's Christ is a Dutchman.
Von Uhde's Christ is a poor man who converses with men in tall
hats, and women in XlXth century bonnets and shawls.
But there is no end to the varieties of type to be found in the
Christs of the artists. We are only waiting for an advance in African
civilisation for a negro Christ, who may be quite as impressive as any
of the Aryan ones. The shallowest of all the Christs is the operatic
Christ, just as the shallowest of the Virgins is the operatic Virgin.
Father Vaughan, obsessed with the Christs of Guido, Ary Scheffer,
Muller & Co., and with the Virgins of Sassoferrato and Bouguereau,
was staggered by Epstein's Christ, just as he would be staggered by
Cimabue's gigantic unearthly Virgin. He will soon know better. And
if he will only read the Gospels instead of the despatches of the war
correspondents, he will find that there is not a trace of "tenderness,
calmness, and sweetness" in St. Matthew's literary portrait of Christ,
and that the operatic Christ was invented by St. Luke.
All the Christs in art must stand or fall by their power of sug
gesting to the beholder the sort of soul that he thinks is Christ's soul.
It is evident that many people have found this in Mr. Epstein's
Christ, and that Father Vaughan has not. Well, Father Vaughan will
find his Christ in every Roman Catholic Church in the land, and in
all the shops that furnish them. Let him choose the statue that is
282 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
nearest his own heart; and I have no doubt that Mr. Cecil Phillips
will place it beside Mr. Epstein's and leave every man to judge for
himself which of the two is the more memorable.
BERNARD SHAW
I reproduce an article by a well-known art critic, which is a
masterpiece of the taradiddles which pass for thought in Blooms-
bury circles. It is written in the well-known "Fry" manner and
appeared in the Outlook of February 21, 1920:
Having read that a figure of Christ was included in the works by
Mr. Jacob Epstein at the Leicester Galleries, I went there fearing the
worst. In the result, I was agreeably surprised. The figure is not sensa
tional. It might be described as a study of a religious enthusiast. The
high, compact head, earnest eyes, and eloquent mouth are true to type;
and the attitude and gesture are those of eager persuasion.
After this it may seem ungrateful to say that the figure is all wrong.
It is wrong in a way that applies to a great deal of modern art, and,
therefore, it lends itself to consideration. At this time of day neither
Mr. Epstein's nor any other artist's ideas of the Redeemer are of
the least interest to anybody. They are, in the true sense of the word,
impertinent. Above a certain level of importance all historical figures
are true in proportion as they are traditional, and any attempt to
"re-interpret" them makes them relatively untrue. Humanity may be
a poor thing, but it does not make that sort of mistake. The folly of
interpretation applies even to more accurate knowledge of die facts
than is contained in the tradition. The story of the painter, who, in
the interests of accuracy, introduced into a picture of "The Last
Supper" a basket of Jerusalem artichokes in ignorance that "Jerusalem"
is only a corruption of "girasole" is a lesson for all time. I have not
read Mr, George Moore's The Brook Kerith, but I am quite sure that
it is fuU of Jerusalem artichokes.
But, apart from the folly and impertinence of all such re~interpreta«
tions, Mr. Epstein has made another mistake; an artistic mistake. Re-
interpretation, or even interpretation, of the subject is not the business
of sculpture. Rodin set a very bad example to sculptors with his
"Balzac." He might have made either a portrait of Balzac or a symbol
THE STATUE OF CHRIST 283
of his genius. As it was he combined the two, and so queered the pitch
of sculpture. Nobody would have boggled at a much more extrava
gant symbol of Balzac's genius if it had not looked like a portrait. He
may not be able to reason it out, but the ordinary person seldom makes
a mistake in his instinctive dislike of artistic misapplication.
The business of the sculptor is to interpret not the subject but the
material; to make the stone or bronze or whatever it may be more
like the subject than anybody has made it before by the nice recogni
tion and skilful handling of its properties. This applies to every kind
of art. If I am writing about Julius Caesar my opportunity as an
artist is not to say new things about Caesar but to make words more
like him than anybody has made them before. In his heart of hearts,
Mr. Epstein knows this perfectly well, and he can do it, as may be
judged from his portrait busts in this exhibition. Each of them repre
sents a slightly different and generally felicitous translation of a living
person into bronze; and collectively they establish Mr. Epstein as a
sculptor of the highest talent.
CHARLES MARRIOTT
In contrast to this last article by C. Marriott I give a very
thoughtful one by John Middleton Murry, from the Nation, Feb
ruary 14, 1920:
There is much, and there is room for much, controversy as to who
is our best painter; but there is none on the question who is our best
sculptor. News editors, newspaper readers, cognoscenti— all apparently
save that strange and unknown company which hands out the com
missions for our public monuments— are in agreement that Epstein is—
the real thing. The real thing, we say, because the common factor in
this curious consensus of opinion is not so much an agreement on the
merits of Epstein's sculpture as sculpture, as an acknowledgment that
he makes upon all beholders an intense and definite impression.
Epstein, in short, has succeeded to the position of Rodin, in the
sense that to the contemporary mind he is Sculpture. Gaudier-Brzeska,
who might have passed him in the race, is dead. Eric Gill, who had
his supporters for a season, is hardly more than a stone-carver of un
usual probity but not unusual imaginative power. Epstein alone is
becoming a European figure on his own merits, for we have to admit
284 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
that Mestrovic owed his elevation largely to the accident of a Euro
pean war.
Epstein, then, is Sculpture to the modern world. That is a very good
thing for the world, for Epstein is an artist through and through, and
for the world to be impressed by an artist, no matter how, is a good
thing. I do not doubt that more people will go to the Leicester Gal
leries to see a new Christ than will go to see a new Epstein. But surely
that is how it was in the brave days of old, in those impassioned
epochs of art which we are always in danger of regarding as animated
by the exclusiveness of a modern Fitzroy Street.
The point is that several hundreds (perhaps even thousands) of
people who will go to see a Christ will come away with the shock
of recognition that, although they had never imagined such a Man of
Sorrows, this strange embodiment of a traditional figure has impressed
them deeply. So they will discover, though not in these terms, what
Art can do; and they may feel, however vaguely, that civilisation
itself depends, not on wealth or victories, but on the possibility of
achievements like Epstein's Christ.
We may leave aside aesthetic criticism of the figure while we con
sider, from this angle, what its creation has involved. It has involved
precisely the activity on which all ideal civilisation depends, the ex
amination of tradition. I observe that Epstein has allowed himself to
say to an interviewer: "Chacun A son Christ" Unfortunately it is not
true. Millions of people have somebody else's Christ, which is equiva
lent to no Christ at all; just as millions of people have somebody else's
justice, or patriotism, or democracy, or Mr. Lloyd George. I believe
it to be true that almost as few people make up their minds about
Christ as about Einstein's theory. It is one of the things they leave
to other people. All the important things are. Christ is as familiar and
as unreal as liberty.
And yet if one is to make up one's mind about life, one must make
it tip about Christ.
I do not mean that we must decide whether or not he was the Son
of God— that may come afterwards— but we must decide whether he
was the world's greatest man. Was he a failure? What is the true
meaning of "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" Are
they or are they not the most fearful, agonising words that were ever
drawn from human lips, the break of the world's greatest heart, the
THE STATUE OF CHRIST 285
shattering of the sublimest and most human faith ever conceived by
the spirit of man? And if they are, is it better to be broken thus on
the wheel of reality? Such questions are urgent to the life of man,
of which Christ is a supreme exemplar. And Epstein's "Christ" is
there to remind the world that it is always the artist who faces them.
That is worth remembering.
Epstein's "Christ" is a man, austere, ascetic, emaciated, having no
form or comeliness. He is a man of sorrows and acquainted with
grief. There is pain, bodily agony, not merely in the gesture with
which he points to the torn flesh of his outspread hand, but in the
poise of his proud unseeing head. If he has risen from the dead, he
rose as a man, by virtue of a tense and concentrated effort of the
human will. Not by bodily strength. The weight and massiveness of
this man are not in his limbs, not even in those large outspread hands
and arms which are chiefly the symbol of his physical agony, but in
the sharply cut, almost disdainful head. The head shows— or shows to
me— that this Christ has suffered as a man and triumphed as a man.
It has the gesture of assertion, not of surrender. I will not wait to
argue with those who scent a paradox and demur that the man could
not have risen from the dead. They have to learn that an artist uses
symbols with mastery; he is their sovereign, not their slave. What
Epstein had to express was the nature of the man who knew every
second of his agony and disillusion. The man of reality swoons under
the pain, gives up the ghost; but art can envisage a man who remains
fully a man under suffering intolerable. This is a Christ-Prometheus.
This, at least, is my own reading of the figure, which gives me
a standard by which to criticise it, though indeed there is little criti
cism to make. Yet it may appear that Epstein's emphasis is, in regard
to the suffering, excessively physical. It is hyper-criticism, I know,
when I consider the manner in which he has avoided all the melodrama
of pain. But there is a suggestion of the stylite martyr, the gaunt and
fanatical hermit, about the figure which, to some of us who are willing
to risk being dismissed as sentimentalists, is less than adequate to the
man of spiritual agony. Is there any chance of insulting a nation if
we say that it is, after all, a Jewish Christ, and not the Christ of the
Western World? "Why hast Thou forsaken me?" never came from
this man's lips. He plumbed the depths of bodily pain, but not of
spiritual disillusion. . . .
286 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
For this article Mr. Murry, I remember, was severely taken
to task by the small fry of the Nation and admonished not to enter
the fields sacred to themselves. If the "intelligentsia" are to speak
on art, allow them to do so with one voice and not divide their
allegiance and so create confusion:
EPSTEIN'S CHRIST
A NOVEL ASPECT
by
The Rev. Edward Shillito
In his daring figure of the Christ, M. Epstein has broken with the
tradition of Christian art. This is not the Christ as Leonardo painted
Him: nor is it the Christ of Russian art. There are some resemblances
in. method between M. Epstein and M. Mestrovic, whose "Strange
Man from His Cross" revealed the sorrowful and broken-hearted
Saviour; but the difference between the two interpretations are pro
found. M. Epstein has made his Christ before all things powerful;
He is revealed at the moment when he says to Thomas, "Behold my
hands and my side." There is an assurance of triumph in His face,
and almost a touch of scorn in the curve of His mouth, as though he
had overcome and derided the vain world which had crucified Him.
Power is in every line; the flat crown of the head; the shoulders; the
defiant chin; the intellectual brows; the immense hands and feet— by
all such means the artist shows that for him Christ is not the gentle
and passive being of Christian art, but the fierce and even violent
leader of men. There is an absence of charm; clearly there is no
beauty that man should desire Him. He looks stern and austere, and
yet terrible in His intensity of passion.
Such interpretations are new in art; are they new in the Gospel?
It must be admitted at once that this Christ would never make sense
of the Gospel as a whole. No one could picture this Man taking chil
dren in His arms and sharing in feasts with publicans and sinners; the
Christ of the Gospel was sharply distinguished from John the Baptist,
the austere prophet This Christ would have come like John, who
"neither eats nor drinks." This Christ would never have smiled or wept.
THE STATUE OF CHRIST 287
Men would have feared Him and obeyed Him, and even died for Him;
they would scarcely have loved Him.
Yet there is another figure in the Gospel, and the value of this great
work lies in the insight which has led the artist to interpret this other
strand in the story. This may have been the Christ of whom men
said: "Elijah is returned." This may have been the Christ who strode
ahead of His disciples towards the city, and they were afraid of Him.
This Christ might have cleansed the Temple and cursed the fig tree.
It is as though the artist has personified this aspect of the historical
Christ.
It has surprised students of the Gospel that this has not been done
by artists before now; the dramatic possibilities are great, and yet have
remained unexpressed.
Because M. Epstein has dared to break new ground, his art is to be
welcomed even by those who do not find in his interpretation any
more than in Leonardo's the whole Christ. They will find a justice
done at least to the power and mastery of the Saviour, who marched
upon Jerusalem and took command, and held it in His grasp even after
they had crucified Him.
APPENDIX V
The Muirhead Bone "Memorandum"
on the Hudson Memorial
Memorandum Sent to His Majesty's First Commissioner of Works:
2$th November, 192$.
To:
The Rt. Hon. Viscount Peel, G.CJ3.
H M. First Commissioner of Works.
MY LORD,
HUDSON MEMORIAL, HYDE PARK
As (A), a Member of the Hudson Memorial Committee, and as
(B), one of the Trustees appointed to govern the modern side of the
National Gallery, and as (C), a professional artist of some thirty years'
standing, I beg respectfully to submit for your Lordship's considera
tion the following memorandum of points arising out of the con
troversy over Mr. Epstein's sculptured Panel which forms part of the
W. H. Hudson Memorial in the Bird Sanctuary, Hyde Park,
(A) (i) It is in your Lordship's knowledge that Memorial was
erected by our Committee on due authority granted by His
Majesty as Royal Ranger of his Parks, at the request of
H.M.O.W., and on the favourable report of the Advisory Com
mittee which assisted your Lordship's predecessor in arriving at a
decision. The Minute Book of our Committee held February zist,
1924, states that our Chairman, Mr. Cunninghame-Graham, re
ported that he had received a letter from the Secretary of His
288
MUIRHEAD BONE "MEMORANDUM" 289
Majesty's Office of Works, informing him that the Memorial
had been accepted by His Majesty and H.M.O.W.
This permission was granted for our Memorial as it stands
today, and in accordance with the usual practice, was taken by
our Committee to cover any slight modification which the prac
tical carrying out of the work rendered necessary, or such as
were the results of requests on the part of H.M.O.W. In the
professional opinion of our official architects expressed in the
course of their letter to the Morning Post, November zyth, 1925,
"We think that unusual care was taken that all parties concerned
should be quite satisfied as to the exact nature of the Memorial,
of which Mr. Epstein's Rima Relief formed the most important
feature."
Our Committee deposited for the consideration of H.M.O.W.:—
(1) The customary architects' plans and elevations of the Me
morial.
(2) A large plaster model to the scale of i inch**- i foot made
under the sculptor's direction, and showing clearly the Rima
Relief Panel and the Bird Baths.
(3) A correct perspective drawing of the whole Memorial as
it actually has been carried out, also clearly showing Mr.
Epstein's Panel as the central feature of the scheme.
I submit that the only alternative open to our Committee must be
deemed fantastic and entirely novel, viz., to get our sculptor to com
plete his carved Panel in stone and on some carriage capable of bearing
the immense weight, perambulate your Lordship's Office for authority
and afterwards the inhabited globe for subscriptions; for even then
the landscape setting would be missing and the fact that the public
cannot approach the Panel closer than a distance of seventy feet from
the eye, be misunderstood, as it is misunderstod even today, by those
who judge, not the Memorial itself, but "close-up" newspaper photo
graphs. ^
In a word we followed scrupulously the best procedure in these
matters, and I venture to assert to your Lordship that few Memorials
of any kind have more closely resembled the pictures and models
submitted on their behalf to a First Commissioner for his information
and decision than did ours.
(ii) Turning now to the allegation that the Memorial does not
290 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
carry out the wishes of its Subscribers this is, I submit, a pure assump
tion which is easily disposed of by the following facts and figures:—
It is true that the first Public Appeal by our Committee (issued
very soon after the Meeting of Mr. Hudson's friends and admirers
convened by Mr, Cunninghame-Graham on November 2 8th, 1922,
at which our Committee was nominated) does not mention the Rima
Panel by Mr. Epstein but only that the Meeting "desired a repre
sentation in stone or marble which should bear a medallion of him
and also serve as a drinking and bathing place for birds; such Memorial
to be erected if possible in conjunction with a Bird Sanctuary in one
of the Royal Parks of London," and a certain amount of money was
received as a result of this Appeal Subsequently, Mr. Epstein, the
sculptor, was approached to give his advice to the Committee and
submitted his first model for their consideration. This showed a Relief
of Mr. Hudson with Bird Baths underneath. Mr. Epstein did not con
sider a Medallion suitable for the site which the H.M.O.W. told us
they were now prepared to grant as the Hudson Memorial Bird Sanc
tuary (if we could produce a scheme meeting with H.M.O.W. ap
proval), because it was evident that the Bird Baths must be placed
at some distance within the enclosure to which the public could have
no access, and a Medallion would consequently not be seen.
This sketch model was submitted to H.M.O.W. but the Committee
were informed at once that no representation of an individual could
be allowed in the Royal Parks and only some sort of decorative Relief
would be permitted. Hence my representation, by Medallion or other
wise, of Mr. Hudson was now ruled out.
After deliberation our Committee evolved in consultation with Mr.
Epstein another scheme with "Rima" from Hudson's Green Mansions
as the subject, and he was formally commissioned by a letter from
our Hon. Secretary, dated February i5th, 1923, to undertake a Relief
Panel of "Rima," and the commission was formally accepted by him
in a letter to the Committee dated Feby. i8th, 1923. In these letters
exchanged, the sculptor undertook that he would "Be prepared to
endeavour to satisfy H.M.O.W. with regard to the design*" This com
mission was given to the artist after a visit to his studio to see a model
of the Rima Panel to which visit all members of the Committee were
invited.
Accordingly Mr. Epstein completed his model which was submitted
MUIRHEAD BONE "MEMORANDUM" 291
together with a careful perspective drawing and plans by our architect
to H.M.O.W. and its Advisory Committee on June zznd, 1923. Our
Committee were informed in due course by H.M.O.W. that their
scheme had been rejected as unsuitable.
Notwithstanding this disappointment our sculptor and architects
undertook to prepare a new design and after consultation with our
Committee this was finally evolved and submitted to H.M.O.W. It was
accepted by your Lordship's predecessor at a Meeting with his ad
visors in February, 1924, before which Meeting I was called as the
representative of the Hudson Memorial Committee prepared to fur
nish any information about our scheme which might be necessary. The
exhibits which were before this Meeting have been already described.
On receiving official notification from H.M.O.W. that our Memorial
had been accepted for erection in Hyde Park (February, 1924), our
Committee prepared a new and wider appeal for funds to carry out
the project which had now received official sanction and which they
could now confidently assure intending subscribers would actually be
erected. Up to the date of this new Appeal we had received 680 pounds
of which sum the Committee themselves had contributed 167 pounds.
As none of our Committee have resigned, their contributions may
fairly be deducted from the first sum given, leaving 513 pounds as
contributions received before our scheme included Mr. Epstein's Rima
Panel, though in the case of many of these contributors to our funds
in this first category we actually know that they consider the final
scheme as erected a great improvement on our first and necessarily
tentative ideas.
Be that as it may, we actually received 1,150 pounds new money
as a result of our new Appeal which contained a clear description of
the Panel, Mr. Epstein's name as our sculptor, and (what is more
important) a good reproduction of the same careful perspective draw
ing showing clearly the Panel as the central portion of the scheme
which had been produced at H.M.O.W. when the matter was up for
your predecessor's approval.
There seems no doubt that the promise of this Panel by a well-
known, and in the opinion of many, distinguished sculptor, induced
many people to subscribe who would not otherwise have been inter
ested in our Memorial. This perspective picture also accompanied our
Appeal for funds in the Times, the Manchester Guardian and else-
292 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
where in March, 1924. Country Life kindly opened a special fund
for our scheme on March 2 2nd, 1924, and received money for us by
an Appeal in which the same picture was again given great prominence.
For the information of our subscribers and to aid our funds we
were now anxious to exhibit Mr. Epstein's large model of the Panel
together with plans of our whole scheme. As, however, the leading
sculptors in the Royal Academy were believed to be out of sympathy
with Mr. Epstein's work, and we had little grounds for supposing his
model would be accepted for exhibition if offered there, and as the
Royal Academy is the only exhibition in London which exhibits
sculpture, we were glad to take the opportunity of showing the model
at the public exhibition of the Architecture Club in Grosvenor House
in the spring of 1924— an Exhibition widely commented upon in the
Press and where our model met with friendly criticism,
As the figures given above will show, we are a Committee with
only modest, financial resources and were anxious to keep subscribers'
money on the Memorial itself. Hence we could not keep in touch with
our 850 subscribers in all parts of the globe. It was financially impos
sible and, I submit, unreasonable, to expect us to do this. We looked
to the official opening to satisfy everyone their money had been well
spent, as they clearly understood from the pictures and descriptions
in these Public Appeals exactly what we desired to do. We did our
best to secure publicity for our scheme fully understanding that it was
that scheme alone which we were authorised by H.M.O.W. to erect
in Hyde Park.
As those who sent us their subscriptions before the final form of
the Memorial was evolved and widely reproduced, have, in but a few
cases, expressed dissatisfaction to the Committee, it is a pure assump
tion that many of them object to the finished Memorial. In any case
apart from the Committee they number 259 subscribers out of a total
number of 850, and they contributed 513 pounds out of a total of
1,830 pounds, received. From their 850 subscribers the Committee have
only received four letters of complaint.
Doubtless some subscribers in addition to the above four are dis
appointed with the finished Memorial, but of what Memorial can that
not be said? And against it may be set off the enhanced pleasure of
other subscribers who tell us they did not expect anything so good,
MUIRHEAD BONE "MEMORANDUM" 293
together with the receipt of a number of subscriptions since the
Memorial was unveiled by the Prime Minister.
It is clearly impossible to assemble our subscribers from all parts
of the globe. This course, for instance, has never been suggested even
in the case of the Cavell Monument with which wide dissatisfaction
has been publicly expressed.
The attitude of some unruly members of the London public (a
public to whom we consider we have made a present of a notable and
dignified work after considerable financial costs to ourselves and
anxious labours) should not be allowed to outweigh the claim we re
spectfully make for your Lordship's protection to save our Memorial
from violence and disrespect. A public work duly authorised being
in our respectful submission like a peaceful citizen who relies confi
dently upon the protection of the Law.
(B) Again, as one of the Trustees of the National Gallery of British
Art, appointed by H. M. Treasury and whose duty it clearly is to
reflect carefully on the permanent interests of art in our country,
other considerations arise in my mind.
(i) If the question of retaining or removing the sculptured
Panel (forming the central feature of the Memorial and without
which it would be artistically of little moment) be referred to
the Fine Art Commission because this controversy has arisen, and
notwithstanding the correct official title on which it was erected;
then clearly all public monuments can be so referred and the
labours of the Commission enter at once a truly formidable field
of retrospective deliberation. I submit to your Lordship that the
overwhelming responsibility of this gigantic task should not be
lightly thrust on the Commission by any Government of the
day. For it is obvious that if a mere manifesto by thirteen mem
bers of the public supported by a newspaper can set a reference
to the Commission in motion any other thirteen persons sup
ported by another newspaper must be granted in common fair
ness, equal rights.
This cannot be to the public interest, as the chopping and
changing of our public statuary would be endless, and degen
erate at last into mere expressions of reprisal. Moreover, the Com
mission would inevitably, I imagine, find itself as divided as any
294 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
other body on the merits of past work and could not hope to
speak with an authoritative voice; and your Lordship, I submit,
is the best judge if the question is simply one of determining
whether or no the work was erected with proper official per
mission.
(ii) It is true that a valuable principle may emerge from the
present controversy, namely, that no Memorial however good its
title, should be considered irremovable, and there I reach agree
ment with the objectors to the Hudson Memorial. How such 3
revision of existing public monuments can best be set in motion
where the objections raised (as in this case) are those of artistic
merit, is a difficult problem which might well engage the atten
tion of the Commission; but there will be general agreement, I
think, to this proposition:— That it is unreasonable to destroy
any such works a few months after unveiling, when no general
agreement on their merits can be possible, and when the sub
scribers who have paid for the work have not yet had the oppor
tunity of viewing it, and moreover, in an age when artistic
ideals are so sharply at variance as in our own time.
That the permanent public interest might suffer by authorities
yielding to hasty action, and mistaking a momentary feeling for
a reasoned verdict, the contemporary account of the stoning of
Michael Angelo's "David" by the Florentine public on that statue
being first unveiled in the square at Florence, and the account
of the strong guard that was required to defend it night and day
is one pertinent footnote; and the brutal attack by Charles
Dickens in Household Words on the very picture by Sir John
MUlais (then aged twenty) for which we, of the Tate Board,
had no difficulty in raising the 10,000 pounds required for its
purchase for the National Gallery, is another.
(iii) And it cannot be in the public interest to humiliate a
well-known and experienced sculptor who has done his best
with a public commission, in case the unfortunate precedent is
established that no sculpture of a bold or unconventional kind
can ever hope to secure official permission for its erection or
official support afterwards— a depressing conclusion which would
be fatal to the true interests of English sculpture, an art ia which
MUIRHEAD BONE "MEMORANDUM" 295
we lag behind other nations and hence require every stimulus
that is possible.
(iv) In conclusion, from this aspect a broad and tolerant com
prehension of the many opposed styles of contemporary art seems
called for on the part of authorities. Legitimate artistic discussion
and disagreement is one thing, but for the authorities to intervene
at the bidding of one small group of disputants and their news
paper and destroy work which at the moment was unpopular,
would, I submit to your Lordship with confidence, be disastrous
and short-sighted.
(C) Glancing now hastily (for I fear to weary your Lordship) at
the third aspect of the matter I am competent to discuss (viz.,
from the standpoint of a professional artist), I think it is forgotten
by the objectors to the Hudson Memorial, that removal, however
carefully carried out, of the Rima Panel is tantamount to its
destruction.
(i) Not only is it a deep stone and a real part of the wall and
not a mere face to it, but it is peculiar in having to be effective to
the eye at a long distance as it is set far back in the Sanctuary
to which the public have no access. Hence small niceties of work
manship were judged by the sculptor to be out of place and a
work bold and generally effective even if rough, was thought
desirable. The work would consequently be useless if detached
from its position. As well expect that one of the large Apostles
by Bernini from the top of the western fa§ade of St. Peter's
would prove a desirable ornament in the gallery. A familiar
example of similar work is the figure of Nelson in Trafalgar
Square— all these works having been designed with the exaggera
tions of form their sculptors' experience decided was necessary
for the peculiar positions they were destined to occupy.
(ii) Another consideration is this— wasting of the Portland
Stone exposed to the open air in London.
Mr. Epstein had observed that in the small Portland Stone
fountain (by Bruce Joy) not far from the Hudson Memorial
and representing a nude girl arising out of the basin of the f oun-
tain, the wasting of the stone on small and neatly finished shapes
has eaten the modelling of the face and figure completely away
296 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
and produced a most unpleasant effect. He thereupon came to
the conclusion that stone carvings exposed to London air must
become completely obliterated and sink into shapeless stone in
a comparatively short ^pace of time. In order therefore to allow
for this inevitable wastage (especially disastrous in the case of a
bas-relief as that work has no outline beyond the square of its
slab), and as his material is not marble or bronze or granite, but
relatively soft stone, he considered it his duty to his clients and
to his own reputation to provide no small forms which such
wastage could immediately seize upon, but rather to keep the
effect as large and weighty as possible.
As the Relief is a work entirely carved by his own hands (and
an interesting example of this modern movement to get back to
real carving by the artist himself, and not the mere mechanical
reproduction of clay originals) he has been able to leave the
stone when he has defined the principal masses and given figure
and birds that sense of movement and energy which is the imagi
native spirit of the work. Consequently to many eyes the work
in its present state may be said to look "raw" and unnecessarily
heavy, but I am convinced that Mr. Epstein's instinct in the
matter has been right and that no other course was open to an
artist hewing a work in rough stone for a London climate, and
a work, be it remembered, meant to be seen a long distance off.
It is highly probable, for careful attention was given by archi
tect and sculptor to the known weathering of Portland Stone
in a south-eastern aspect, that in a few years this "rawness" will
no longer exist and that "the margin of safety" allowed by the
sculptor for weathering will have completely justified itself and
a mellow weathering will have lent chiaroscuro to the whole
Memorial stone.
The uninstructed public cannot, of course, be expected to
understand these matters at present, but will doubtless come to
see that the sculptor's work was informed by a real and far-
sighted knowledge of the conditions of his craft. If the above is
considered it will be apparent on this ground alone how un
speakable is the cruelty which would destroy an artist's work
but a few months old and so frustrate all hope of our seeing its
maturity.
§
MUIRHEAD BONE "MEMORANDUM" 297
(iii) And it should be weighed here, I think, that the claim of
the younger unacademic artist to represent contemporary artistic
thought, as well as older and typically academic artists, is not
altogether an unreasonable one.
However that may be, to my mind there is a rough nobility
and energy in the Panel which is impressive and agrees well with
the austerity of the whole architectural and garden setting. Better
than a pretty and polished thing it gives a feeling of power and
remoteness which to my mind (and I knew the man) is very
well in keeping with that strange figure, who was of English
descent but born of American parents in a wild part of the
Argentine and there reared; who saw England for the first time
when in his twenty-ninth year, and lived amongst us an unnatur-
alised alien till his sixtieth, yet who taught us more than any
other modern writer wherein lies the true savour and beauty of
our own land.
I have the honour to be,
Your Lordship's obedient Servant
(Sgd) MUIRHEAD BONE.
Professor D. S. MacColl wrote to the Times, November 23, 1925:
SIR
Mr. Epstein's relief is the subject of ardent admiration on one side,
of violent reprobation on the other. That is as it should be; only about
dead things is nothing said but good. What is not reasonable is the
demand of the opposition for a hasty abolition of the work whose
merits are in dispute, a man is not executed while on trial for his life,
and the trial of a work of art calls for time and patience.
The President of the Royal Institute of British Architects referred,
the other night, in this connection, to the storm of controversy that
arose when Mr. Gilbert's Shaftesbury fountain was new, the criticism
was not all unjustified, but the protests recently caused by the threat
of its removal proved that it had established itself in the affections of
London.
In the same connection Mr. Eric Maclagan reminded his hearers at
the British Academy of the wild abuse which the Pre-Raphaelite paint
ers had to suJff er from eminent artists, and writers like Charles Dickens,
298 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
nothing worse has been said about "Rima" and some of us remember,
if his son has forgotten, that Burne- Jones fared not much better in
early days.
Another consideration should restore a sense of proportion, there
are London monuments, old and new, which, because of their con
spicuous position in public thoroughfares, are, for many of us, an ac
tive offence to the eye and mind, they cannot be avoided. The Epstein
relief challenges no one who does not go out of his way to see it. It
stands in a secluded corner of a park, at a little distance retreats into a
quiet mass of stone, and only by close peering through the railings is
it possible to indulge a dislike for it. The detractors may comfortably
take their way about London for ever without seeing it again. I am
not claiming for Mr. Epstein's panel that it is faultless, but, in common
with the whole memorial, it shows an exercise of the imagination which
is rare in our public monuments. It may be confidently hoped that the
authorities will resist dictation on the part of eager heresy-hunters, and
I am convinced that they will be supported in that attitude by fair-
minded people generally.
D. S. MACCOLL
Nov. 22, 1925
And Sir Muirhead Bone wrote to the Times on November 24,
1925, with a list of signatories:
Opinions will always differ about the artistic merits of works of art,
and they are likeliest to differ about a work so modern and unconven
tional in style as Mr. Epstein's monument to W. H. Hudson (The Bird
Sanctuaiy in Hyde Park). Due consent for the whole design, (shown
in a large model of the Panel by the sculptor), was obtained from the
First Commissioner of Works, assisted by the advice of his Art Ad
visory Committee, and the memorial was then erected by subscriptions
from all parts of the United Kingdom, the Empire and America. I have
the agreement of the following signatories against any proposal to re
move so completely authorised a work on the demand of a mere section
of the public. So unprecedented an action as now seems to be proposed,
would, if carried out, inevitably open an era of hasty decision and re
prisal in the region of our Public Memorials, which most of us would
MUIRHEAD BONE "MEMORANDUM" 299
deplore, and which all Committees responsible for them, and all sculp
tors would find intolerable.
The following are the signatories referred to: Arnold Bennett, Lau
rence Binyon, Sir. D. Y. Cameron, The Hon. Evan Charteris, S. L.
Courtauld, Samuel Courtauld, C. Eumorfopoulos, Lord Howard de
Walden, Sir John Lavery, the Right Hon. J. Ramsey Macdonald,
M.P., Ambrose McEvoy, Professor C. H. Reilly, Morley Roberts, Sir
Michael Sadler, Lord Sandwich, C. P. Roberts, George Bernard Shaw,
Ernest Thurtle, M.P., Sybil Thorndyke, Hugh Walpole, R. B. Cun-
ninghame-Graham, Holbrook Jackson, Augustus E. John, George
Moore, Henry W. Nevinson, Sir William Orpen, Ben Tillet, Hubert
Wellington, Francis Dodd, R.A., etc.
We have also received letters to protest against the removal of the
panel signed by 170 students of the Royal College of Art, and by 85
students of the Slade School.
APPENDIX VI
The Battle of "Day" and "Night
The Manchester Guardian of July 20, 1919, contained the
following article by James Bone:
EPSTEIN'S ART
HIS LAST TWO SCULPTURES
Storms of criticism, rising at times into terms of honest, full-blooded
abuse that are rarely heard in art controversy in England, although
common enough, indeed usual, in France at the appearance of any new
expression in art have greeted the appearance of the two sculpture
groups by Mr. Epstein over the portals of the new Building of the
Underground Railway at St. James's Park Station, Westminster. At
the same time a number of artists, architects, and critics, whose opin
ions are worthy of respect, have expressed their admiration for these
works. The position to-day, indeed, is like that which followed the
unveiling of Mr* Epstein's Hudson Memorial relief in Hyde Park a
couple of years ago, and also that of his statues on the British Medical
Association Building in the Strand some twenty years ago. No party
would raise an outcry now about the Strand figures, and if they did
people would now probably be only surprised, while even Rima in her
grove in Hyde Park has ceased to arouse angry feelings, and has be
come, indeed, one of the sights that the modern Londoner likes to take
his visitors to see after the cloying candy of the Peter Pan statue. The
figures on Underground House, however, are now on trial, and as the
Scots say "tholing their assize," That they are extremely distasteful on
first sight to a considerable number of people of CttltW? and taste is
300
BATTLE OF "DAY" AND "NIGHT" 301
undeniable, much as Rodin's Balzac was to the Parisians of that time.
Mr. Epstein has at any rate succeeded in making people look at and
even think about architectural sculpture, and one cannot easily remem
ber any other architectural sculpture in London that has done that.
Whether we like it or not, Mr. Epstein in whatever he does commands
our attention and makes us think about the nature of sculpture. And
his work, however it may shock the complacency of a country that is
as poor in sculpture as it is rich in poetry, and has very little to show
the stirring of new ideas in art that are moving over Europe, has to be
taken seriously, for no one acquainted with the subject will deny that
he is a skilled and gifted artist, and that his portrait busts at least, are
among the outstanding works of this age. If he chooses to express him
self in the arbitrary forms of sculpture he uses, we cannot say it is
because he has not the skill to represent a man as closely as a Madame
Tussaud figure does. The groups at Underground House must be ac
cepted as his conception of architectural sculpture, however naughty
it is of him to think so. After all, he really must know something about
his job.
"NIGHT"
"Night," which was the first of the two groups to be free of scaffold
ing, did not quite rouse the old hostility although most people frankly
did not like it. The subject is a mother figure of a heavy Eastern type
and lying on her lap a male figure whom she is stilling to sleep with
a gesture of a mighty hand. The shapes are simplified to their bare
essentials and carved with a hard square expressiveness without regard
to anything but the sculptural idea. The horizontal line of the recum
bent figure repeats with a curved variation the line of the stone course
over the doorway: the leg of the male figure, curved at the knee, with
its drooping foot is echoed on the other side by the shoulder and hand
of the female figure. The rhythm of the design runs through all its
parts, which fall into three main planes receding toward the top. It is
an elemental conception of night, ponderable and remote, making
strange calls to our consciousness.
3o2 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
"DAY"
"Day" is harder to accept. A large father figure with a fierce face,
flat and hard and round like the sun at noon, holds and presents a male
child standing between his knees, while the child stretches up his arms
towards the neck of his father, his face turning upwards in a gesture
of reluctance to face his task. The main pattern of the group is made
of the two pairs of arms, the small ones within the larger, and the four
legs forming the base. It is one of the most inventive Mr. Epstein has
evolved, and again the sculptor has sought to express his idea in the
starkest, most simplified forms, with a severe squareness of effect. His
task was to produce an architectural decoration by carving, a project
ing part of the actual stone of the building, and this he has done with
an appropriate imagination and evocative power adequate for the em
phasis of the portal on the face of this sheer tower-like building with
its regiments of windows.
But there are points about this group that are difficult to get over,
particularly the modelling of the upper part of the child's body, where
the chest seems to have been carved away, and the treatment of the
arm; while the squareness of the legs changes to a rounded treatment
of the body as though the sculptor had two minds about his technique.
But the powers to imagine and deliver his idea with its uncanny fire are
tremendously there. Learned men tell us that there is nothing Assyrian
or African about his art and no resemblance to Archaic rock-carving!
In short they deny the art pedigree that many writers would force
upon him. But if Epstein has taken his studies of these works so deeply
into the body of his art that they cannot be identified, it only increases
the suspicion that there is something new as well as something alien to
our habits of thought in his sculpture. Before we reject it with abuse
we might perhaps take a little time to get used to it. We can't be quite
sure right off that he is not saying new things to us that we have to
tune our ears to hear.
"Change is the pulse of life on earth;
The artist dies but art lives on:
New rhapsodies are ripe for birth
When every rhapsodist seems gone
BATTLE OF "DAY" AND "NIGHT" 303
So, to my day's extremity
May I, in patience infinite
Attend the beauty that must be,
And, though it slay me, welcome it."
Yes, but do we know that Epstein is bringing new beauty to our
generation? Well, it seems to the present writer to be here "burning
bright," although to many it is still "in the forests of the night."
JAMES BONE
A letter to the Manchester Guardian in reply to James Bone's
article:
THE CULT OF UGLINESS
By Sir Reginald Blomfield,
Past President of the Institute of British Architects
The sculpture by Mr. Epstein and his colleagues in the new building
of the Underground Railway at St. James's Park has raised in an un
usually acute form the question what one is to think of it all. Is this new
manner serious art or is it just bluff? It is regarded with enthusiastic
admiration by some and with loathing not less whole-hearted by others.
That it is something quite new in the art of civilised countries is ob
vious; indeed its advocates openly condemn modern sculpture from
Pheidias down to the present day, and its exponents repudiate what has
hitherto been regarded as the normal anatomy of the human figure.
Yet it is entitled to a hearing, and as in his sympathetic article (Man
chester Guardian, July 20) your correspondent "J.B." has stated very
ably the case for the new manner I venture to offer one or two con
siderations on the other side. I doubt if everyone will accept his state
ment that "Rima" no longer arouses the angry feelings that she did at
her first appearance in Hyde Park, and, though it is difficult to assess
the effect of fashion and connoisseurship in forming permanent opin
ion, it is, I think, begging the question to assume that it is only a
matter of time before the new manner comes into its own and that the
fashionable opinion of the moment will be the verdict of posterity.
At the St. James's Park station the new manner is in full blast with
3o4 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
varying degrees of blatancy; for Mr. Epstein was not the only sculp
tor there. In regard to his two groups I admit the impressiveness of the
group of "Night" with all its sinister suggestiveness. As to his group
of "Day" I keep silence, yea, even from good words or any other
words, because our judgments of contemporary art must to some ex
tent be tentative and experimental. Mr. Epstein's ability is undeniable.
He is not perhaps on the level of any artists we have produced since
the middle years of the i8th century, as a Mr. Sitwell had the temerity
to say under the auspices of the B.B.C., forgetting all about Alfred
Stevens, but Mr. Epstein showed what he could do many years ago in
the remarkable figures of the well-known building in the Strand. The
promise of those halcyon days seems to have faded away, and Mr.
Epstein seems to me to have imprisoned his considerable natural pow
ers within the iron cage of formula— of a simplification which has de
generated into distortion and an expressionism which has ended in the
grotesque.
For one reason or another, the cult of ugliness seems to have taken
the place of the search for beauty which from time immemorial has
been the aim of artists. In so far as this is a breakaway from insipidity
and convention it has the sympathy of thoughtful people; but there
is another and very much graver side to the question— so far this has
only shown itself in isolated cases in England— and it turns on the fun
damental issue: Is there or is there not an absolute beauty? Because, if
there is not, one thing is as good as another, and this appears to be the
view of some people, judging by the subjects they choose and the man
ner in which they present them. I think a stand should be made in
these things— as liberal as possible, yet a definite stand. Bestiality still
lurks below the surface of our civilisation, but why grope about for it
in the mud, why parade it in the open, why not leave it to wallow in
its own primeval slime?
From the Manchester Guardim, July 25, 1929:
SIR,
It is good of you to give ypur readers the pictures of the Epstein
sculptures.
It is always well to know the worst and learn to face it. I spent some
months in the "antique" at the Slade School under L6gros. He was
BATTLE OF "DAY" AND "NIGHT" 305
modern but the antique was still Greek, now apparently it should be
Sumerian.
There is a lot of hideous sculpture of very early date in the British
Museum of similar character to your reproductions. I remember my
copies from the antique had like tendencies, and looking at the pictures
I wonder if I was wise to give up art for the law. In justice to Legros,
let it be said he did not persuade me to be a sculptor.
From a commercial point of view, I think the directors who have
been fiercely criticised, have a valid excuse for exhibiting these statues,
always assuming their action was not ultra vires under their articles
of association. For monuments of so repulsive a character may reason
ably be expected to drive the man in the street underground, and thus
swell the revenues of the undertaking.
EDWARD PARRY
2yth July, 1929.
To the Editor of the Manchester Guardian:
SIR,
No doubt there is a legitimate amusement like Sir Edward Parry's
to be obtained from the seemingly odd conclusions in art reached by
those of us whose "months" of study have lengthened now into many
years, yet I trust even this will not divert your readers from trying to
understand the very real merits of these sculptures.
And perhaps in the first place a certain consideration is due from us
when seeking to judge the mature productions of an artist who is as
widely considered as Epstein is, to possess genius at his chosen work.
The groups have a somewhat harsh and stark character which makes
little concession to our likes and dislikes, but to me they speak with
the sudden impressiveness which I think is the innate sentiment of
great sculpture.
I am grateful, in these days of many trivialities for the intense desire
they evince to find anew the old sources of grandeur in sculptural art.
I feel my imagination kindled here, and recognizing this as an
unusual reaction to the sculptured figures on a public building, am
content.
MUIRHEAD BONE
BURLINGTON FINE ARTS CLUB, W.
306 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
In the Evening Standard, July i, 1929, H. R. Wilenski wrote:
Epstein's "Day" and "Night" are the grandest stone carvings in
London. To say this is grossly to underpraise them.
It is like saying that the Great Pyramid is a grander headstone than
any to be found in England, or that "Tristan and Isolde" is a grander
song than "I can't help lovin' that man."
The groups may not be a suitable decoration for the headquarters of
a railway that exists because Londoners to-day scurry like rats under
ground to seek their daily bread. It may not please those who are
flocking to see the picture of "Salome" of which a glimpse is vouch
safed with much trumpetings every other week.
"Day" from the standpoint of such art lovers is lamentably lacking
in bowdlerized sex appeal. It cannot be apprehended by the man who
has left his deeper self at home, while he transacts business or enjoys
himself. It cannot be apprehended by a vain woman or a self-satisfied
modeller in clay.
But it can be apprehended by every man and woman who can grasp
the ideas of the words "Time" and "Form" in the abstract.
Because the spirit that created these grand carvings is a spirit of all
time, and the brain that carved them is a brain that can invent sym
bolic form.
Such spirits and such brains are rare. They are the brains and spirits
of the great artists.
"Day" and "Night" are certainly the best things that Epstein has
yet done.
And on the lyth of July, the following letter appeared:
Sm,
Your photographs of Epstein's recent work and especially that of
"Day" with its massive columnar frontal effect— give, better than any
I've seen, an idea of the constructional qualities of vertical, horizontal,
and pyramidal forms, so boldly used here, which strike one as "archi
tectural." But one must view the building, and from many angles and
distances, to realise the more profound relations which have been built
up between architecture and sculpture. It seems to me that architect
has summoned sculptor to give life and focus of interest to a building
BATTLE OF "DAY" AND "NIGHT" 307
which reaches great distinction by virtue of severity, precision, and
rigorous adherence to the problems of function and available space.
The fundamental mark of the born sculptor is that he can take a block
of stone, and by his carving, give the form intenser interest, signifi
cance and life. Surely this has been done beyond question. I believe
the building has gained greatly by it, and without the sculpture would
now appear a little frigid, awaiting something, like a head of noble
proportions and features lacking eyes to animate it and focus one's
attention.
The ability to conceive designs which in scale and large simplicity
of idea could stand up to such a building has seemed non-existent in
England for too long, and when this ability is united with Epstein's
tremendous power of vitalizing his material— and the onlooker; my
main feeling is one of exhilaration, and I am content to let the difficul
ties which one readily admits, take their place as minor affairs which
will solve themselves, or rather cease to hinder as in the case of Rima.
How interesting to review this work in ten years time and how
many sculptured buildings of 1928-1929 will one be capable of re
calling.
H. G. WELLINGTON
Professor of the Royal College of Art,
South Kensington.
APPENDIX VII
"Genesis" and the Journalists
I will quote a few only of the criticisms of this statue so long
worked and brooded over by me.
An extract from the Daily Express of February 7, 1931:
EPSTEIN'S BAD JOKE IN STONE
MONGOLIAN MORON THAT IS OBSCENE
O you white foulness! He called you "Genesis!" O yes, he has a
genius for titles, this man who cracks bad jokes with a chisel He called
you "Genesis,"
The place was the Leicester Galleries in Leicester Square. I have
told you the title of the statue, the man who did it was Jacob Epstein.
He was holding there an exhibition of his work. He was also exhibit
ing this thing called "Genesis."
Over "D.D." I occasionally write light accounts of things and people
in the newspapers. Yesterday I was sent to the Galleries, to be humor
ous, maybe slightly witty. About this statue I cannot.
This thing fashioned from white marble, shows a mongolian type
of woman. One gigantic hand, with square fingers, rests across the
stomach. It has no legs, the body merging into a chunk of roughly
chipped marble. The face is the face of a Moron, with the vapid
horrible stare of the idiot! The thick lips pout with beastly compla
cence under the stone blob which I presume is the nose.
Artistically the thing is absurd* Anatomically, it is purely comic.
It is a bad joke on expectant motherhood.
308
"GENESIS" AND THE JOURNALISTS 309
From the Daily Mail:
MR. EPSTEIN'S LATEST-AND HIS WORST
The latest contribution of Mr. Epstein to art is a large statue in mar
ble called "Genesis"— he is good at titles— which will be on view at the
Leicester Galleries, London, next week.
The photograph we publish affords clear proof that the sculptor in
his ideas of beauty grows every year more peculiar.
It is possible to make out a case for the stone images of his which
have excited so much wrath and derision— quite .unjustly, think many
broad-minded critics— but it is difficult to imagine what defence can be
offered for this simian-like creature whose face suggests, if anything,
the missing link.
The rest of the statue is in keeping with the brutish face. Apart from
the extreme ugliness of the figure, the conception is harsh and unsym
pathetic to the theme, doing violence to the cultured observer's sense
of the fitness of things.
HE DOESN'T ARGUE
I have been among the warmest admirers of Mr. Epstein; this time
I have warned him that he has flagrantly invited trouble. But he is as
unrepentant and as self-satisfied as ever.
"What need was there," I said to him more in sorrow than anger,
"to give the lady such an ugly face?" "Ugly!" was his astonished reply.
"You say ugly, but / don't agree with you. It is not ugly to me. I
pursue only my own ideas, not anybody else's."
The mischief is that you cannot argue with Epstein. He is a law
unto himself. Like most artists and sculptors, he has no gift for self-
criticism. The last thing on earth he knows is whether his work is good
or bad. As a rule he is prepared to believe that his last performance is
the best.
"Genesis" will be a great draw, but it will be a draw for the very
opposite reason that a sculptor of Mr. Epstein's quality should desire.
His next exercise in stone should be Einstein's "Relativity"— a subject
on which he could be positively paralysing, and as only eight people
in the world understand "Relativity," he would be safe against criti
cism.
3io LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
From the Daily Telegraph, February 7, 1931:
A STATUE UNFIT TO SHOW
JACOB EPSTEIN'S "GENESIS"
COARSE AND REPELLENT
by R. R. Tatlock
The central feature of the exhibition at the Leicester Galleries, to
be opened privately to-day, and to the general public on Monday, is
the immense statue in marble entitled "Genesis" by Jacob Epstein.
The wide-spread criticism of this artist's "Night" and "Day" on the
building of the Underground Railway by St. James's Park will be re
called. The new work eclipses these so far as oddity of design and
peculiarity of psychological conception are concerned. It portrays a
pregnant woman.
Both in ancient and in modern art, fecundity has been represented
many times with the delicacy and reverence proper to the theme. The
ideas and emotions associated in the thoughts of normal healthy-minded
artists and art lovers with this subject have again and again been ex
pressed by artists. But this sort of thing Is in an altogether different
category.
HEAVY AND INARTISTIC
As an art critic I am bound to consider as best I can a work of art
purely from the aesthetic standpoint. But there are times when this
habit of detachment breaks down; and this, so far as I am concerned,
is one of those occasions.
Regarded purely and simply as a work of art the statue appears to
me to be uncouth. I mean by that I do not very much like the
effect of the relationship of the forms. The ensemble is, or appears to
me to be, far too heavy— so much so, indeed, that one's impression is
of something uncouth and inartistic.
The statue, as a work of art, lacks altogether that finesse and ele
gance and that lyrical quality invariably present in a first-rate crea
tion. The object has not a note of music and not a line of poetry in it,
and in this respect is in a sharp contrast with some of die portrait busts
in bronze, by the same artist, which surround it.
"GENESIS" AND THE JOURNALISTS 311
VISION OF HOLINESS
But it is not unfair to an artist if the observer, whether he be an art
critic or not, should take exception, if he is so minded, to anything like
gratuitous coarseness. That "Genesis" is coarse few will doubt.
Epstein goes out of his way to impress us, not with his sense of
beauty (a sense which he certainly possesses), but with what is ugly,
and does not hesitate to thrust upon us a vision of maternity, usually
treated as a thing almost sacred, that can only repel and cannot con
ceivably delight or entertain.
For our delectation he presents us with the figure of a woman with
a face like an ape's, with breasts like pumpkins, with hands twice as
large and gross as those of a navvy, with hair like a ship's hawser. There
are other details of the figure which one simply does not care to dis
cuss.
With these remarks I am content to leave the question except to add
the suggestion that the proprietors of the gallery would be well advised
to remove the statue from the collection as being unsuitable for public
exhibition.
As against these passionate diatribes, I reproduce two articles,
one by the Belgian critic, Sander Pierron, in Neptune, and one by
R. H. Wilenski in the Observer.
From Neptme, February 26, 1931:
THE EPSTEIN SCANDAL
Let there be no confusion of the issue. We are not here concerned
with Einstein but with Epstein. We are not concerned with the illus
trious German physicist but with an English sculptor. Yet we are in
the domain of relativity, but of aesthetic relativity.
We can assure you that we are not alluding to a financial matter or
to a matter of morals. The scandal about which we want to speak, is
purely and exclusively of an artistic order, and at the present time it
is causing much ink to flow in the newspapers and reviews on the other
side of the Channel.
And what is all this scandal about?
3i2 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
The reader must understand that an English sculptor, Jacob Epstein
by name, has taken it into his head to endow his country with a monu
mental form of sculpture founded on new principles of aesthetics, and
has substituted expressionism for realism. Passing from theory to prac
tice, he has produced a series of works which are nothing less than so
many acts of heresy in a country where the most advanced sculptors
have by no means emancipated themselves from conventional rules.
Reflect, if you will, that England, amongst her distinguished masters,
has only had her John Flaxmans, her Sir Joseph Edgar Boehmes, her
Lord Leightons, her Alphonse L6gros, her Alfred Stevens, her John
Macallan Swans, her George Frederick Watts, her Alfred Gilberts,
superb passeistes creators of forms elegant, forceful and harmonious,
it is true, but all closely related to the forms modelled by the traditional
masters of the past, a phalanx of masters not in tune with their own
times.
Now Jacob Epstein has felt the urge to free the sculpture of his
country from the depths of secular traditions and to subject it to the
victorious laws of aesthetic evolution. And this, despite the fact that
he has received an academic training, and does not in any way discard
the canons of an almost academic construction, although as an impres
sionist he runs to a passionate colourful composition, for example when
modelling a bust— for if in his portrait busts he attempts to lay bare
the mind of his subjects, he does not consider it necessary, when delin
eating their essential features, to have recourse to the deformities so
dear to the surrealists.
This aesthetic evolution, in its positive manifestations, unites across
the centuries the primitivist principles of the great sculpture of Egypt,
Central America, Southern Asia and ancient Greece, It is a sculpture
designed to serve architecture, a sculpture which, based on the expres
sion of the mass, is at the same time impregnated with the ideal, that
is to say, it speaks to us equally by its spirit and by its form; a sculp
ture, in short, supremely symbolic, adding to the language of the lines
of the building, of which, to a certain degree, it is the soul; or, if it is
considered apart, as an isolated object, sheds round about it a lustre
of innate meaning, by virtue of its decorative quality.
Can one imagine greater audacity in a country where conservatism,
through the ages, has placed a curb on the daring of its rare, progres
sive spirits who must always have had the feeling of moving in chains?
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"GENESIS" AND THE JOURNALISTS 313
And what a hue and cry is being raised in London, at this moment
about certain works by Epstein exhibited at the Leicester Galleries!
It is a new war of the ancients against the moderns, and, in that vast
and conservative city where heated conflicts about aesthetic questions
are scarcely common, it is assuming epic proportions.
The great daily newspapers of England are full of unheard-of dia
tribes against this accursed sculptor, who, as an enemy of all puri-
tanism, has the temerity to strike out in quest of a nonconformist ideal.
He is accused of disowning his ancestors, he is charged with infamy.
It is no longer criticism, it i$ prejudice, it is attack, it is sometimes even
slander, slander trimmed with threats. For certain journalists go so far
as to demand the removal from this salon, resounding with the din of
their outcry, such part of the exhibit as, so these hypercritics pretend,
is an offence to good taste and consummate in its ugliness. The public
provides a chorus to these would-be extinguishers of the flames of
genius, and few and far between are those who, recognising the meta-
morphism of art, form up at the side of the master, and at the risk of
falling foul of the blows dealt out, bravely defend his virile and trans
forming philosophy.
Intellectual circles on the other side of the Channel are in a ferment
Revolt is not yet an actual fact, although in the exhibition rooms, re
volt is already in evidence. But a scandal it is. Or rather it is the acute
climax of a scandal begun some two years ago. At that time there were
unveiled on the building of the St. James's Park Station of the Under
ground, two enormous stone groups by Epstein, which let loose a furi
ous campaign of protest. The removal from the Leicester Galleries of
the marble statue representing "Genesis" is being demanded. These two
groups are still in place, although repeated attempts were made to dam
age them, to degrade them, and to destroy them, because they upset
conventional standards, Nevertheless, there they still are. A day will
come, no doubt, when it will be discovered that in them reside the
aesthetic aspirations of a disturbed epoch trying to find its bearings.
Then* in their turn, these pieces, subversive at the present time, will
have become classic.
These two gigantic groups, hewn with a passionate and mysterious
brutality, and reminiscent of the earliest works of Chaldea and ancient
Greece, conjure up "Day" and "Night." If we are far from Michael
Angelo who, in the Florentine mausoleums of the Medicis, treated
3i4 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
these subjects with divine splendour, we are nevertheless on a plane of
monumentalism identical with that on which Buonarroti set his en
chanting creations. "Day" shows a nude, bearded man, seated, holding
with both hands, between his knees, a child clasping his neck. In
"Night," a sort of free transposition of the "Pieta," we see a woman,
also seated, but draped, holding on her knees the inert, extended body
of a nude youth, her right hand supporting his head, and her left hand
held low down over his face in a gesture of protection. These two
groups are worked in sharp planes, on which the light and shade play,
to form clear-cut antitheses, and these, in giving bold definition to the
planes, impart to these decorative cornpostions an architectural value.
No detail; a heavy silhouette, well-balanced, in which the great, an
tique law of frontality survives. Gestures, as if geometrically conceived
and synthetised in the expression of life and of death that dominates in
each group; the gravity of the faces, graven into rude features, the
thought which, without dominating the form, heightens it with deep
spiritual accent.
Convention is absent in these works which, rising above all sense of
time, unite the pure plastic of the primitives with the plastic, stripped
of inessentials, of the artists of tomorrow. They are among the most
beautiful and healthy wild flowers of the extremist art of our time, the
paths of which are broadening out more and more on to the future,
thanks to the stubborn will of those fighters who, freed from supersti
tions like Jacob Epstein do not care two hoots for the insults with
which their enemies would like to overwhelm them.
The majority of English critics, who would hold back the hands of
the clock, deny all talent to this futurist. They have said that Epstein's
productions are absolutely negligible, considered as works of art; that
they are quite insignificant from an aesthetic viewpoint, coarse in de
sign, and repulsive in conception; that their author has but a poor
regard for formal beauty; that the symbolism he claims to have put
into his groups is obscure; that they are the product of an intellect not
fired with any imagination.
This, then, is some of the abuse that at the time was showered on
Jacob Epstein who was also censured for cherishing alleged ambitions
to decorate London with sculptures that no one likes or understands,
To determine the real value of die master, it is necessary to strike out
iu a direction opposite to that along which this systematic abuse and
"GENESIS" AND THE JOURNALISTS 315
prejudice are directed. For it is certain that, with Epstein, there is
being opened up for English sculpture an energetic movement for the
enfranchisement of rules newly evolved and in harmony with Conti
nental innovations. But Epstein, even though he has not rallied young
artists to his standard, is strong enough to make his personal participa
tion effectual.
Of late the Press had stopped abusing this man, for whom these
attacks act as a stimulant, when all of a sudden he committed the same
crime over again. And what is this crime? It is that he is showing at
his exhibition an enormous figure hewn out of marble and representing
"Genesis." And how has the artist conceived it? In the form of a fe
male of apparently monstrous proportions whose countenance, marked
with a fierce animalism, conjures up the woman of paleolithic times.
The upper part of the body with its firm breasts and shoulders solidly
set, is normal in its magnificent bulk. But from the waist downwards,
the body broadens out in formidable curves, to make the lower part of
the trunk and the thighs of colossal size. The left hand, turned up and
of usual size, is placed on her abdomen, while the right hand, which is
enormous, rests, open, on her groin. One has the feeling that these two
hands, each so different from the other, want to restrain the palpita
tions in her entrails, the mysterious echoes of which, penetrating to the
understanding of this "Mother of Humanity," impress on her bestial
and thoughtful features, the full consciousness of the destiny she car
ries in her flanks, infinite as the universe. An awesome image in white
marble, the disproportions in which, as Diderot would say, are justified
because they are called for by the imperious necessity of the symbol
striven after. In this piece of sculpture, the disproportions and deform
ities are the essential qualities, since it is they that express the supreme
idea to which Epstein has been obedient. That enormous right hand
is on a scale with the lower part of the abdomen of which it feels the
heat of the child enclosed within. That small left hand is on a scale
with the bosom below which its fingers lie folded, and the roundness
of which will soon be swelled to fulness by the event to come. Every
thing about this figure, so full of clarity and mystery, is expressive; it
is the realisation of a conception which has taken long to ripen, a reali
sation born of deep, emotional reflection. And this woman, the syn
thesis of the generations, this mother of all mothers, who carries within
her the first child, whose cries will soon be heard-the first cries of man
3i6 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
on earth— is of an immense chastity, in her flesh made fruitful by the
divine touch.
How is it possible for critics, shocked and indignant with this work,
which will mark a date in the history of art, to say that this figure,
which holds such a universal emotion, must be considered as an accept
ance of the Darwin Theory, "for it is more in keeping with the occu
pants of the monkey-house than with the Eves chiselled by academic
sculptors." A journalist ironically says, "The majority of people will
be hurt in their ideas of love by the type here selected for the preg
nant woman." Another critic, after pointing out that, in ancient and
modern art, fecundity has habitually been depicted with the delicacy
and the respect appropriate to this theme, says that "Genesis" "is a coarse
work, in which the relative arrangement of form is such as only to
produce an effect of heaviness in a weird and unaesthetic object." In
the case of another "it lacks refinement and grace and that lyrical qual
ity always present in a creation worthy of the name." "In this piece
of marble, not a note of music, not a trace of poetry; the eloquent
spirit of melody inherent in every masterpiece is here altogether ab
sent." In a word, "Epstein does not seek to impress by beauty but by
ugliness." And yet another, more lively than all the rest, finishes up by
demanding "its removal from the Leicester Galleries, it being a thing
whose public exhibition is a disgrace"; "die figure of a woman with the
face of a chimpanzee, breasts like pumpkins, hands twice as large and
heavy as those of a navvy, hair like a ship's cable, and displaying other
extravagances, which are not worth the trouble of discussion,"
Jacob Epstein is keeping his own counsel He too is not going to the
trouble of discussing anything. He does not treat all this foul trash with
contempt for the simple reason that he ignores it He has the fierce and
inflexible will of those men of primitive times to whom his "Genesis"
takes us back. Is it not true that he is related, across the millenniums,
to those sculptors in ivory who chiselled that famous and astonishing
figure of fecundity, called the Venus of Brassempuy, whose body, so
small in size yet grandiose aesthetically, displays the same "fatal" de
formities as the lofty marble figure by Jacob Epstein? Thus primitive
artist has been guided solely by instinct. The sculptor of "Genesis" is
guided uniquely by reason. But both of them in their care for pure
form, have expressed the most profound human symbol, that of our
"GENESIS" AND THE JOURNALISTS 317
carnal origin, in matter which they have quickened with the throb of
eternal life. The cave-dwellers would have taken no offence at this work
so fraught with meaning. There would have been no scandal among
the Pyrenean tribes. All of which proves that modern man often has
the short-sightedness of an individual who has not completely evolved.
SANDER PIERRON.
From the Observer, February 8, 1931:
Mr. Jacob Epstein is one of the few contemporary artists who can
still provide us with a shock. He has been before the public for more
than twenty years, but he still gives us the unexpected. In other words
his creative fount is not exhausted. He can still enlarge his own expe
rience and ours also unless we are of those who think that our ex
perience is already sufficient.
In this new exhibition at the Leicester Galleries the shock is provided
by the marble carving entitled "Genesis." Colossal in size, staring white
in colour, this mass of marble shocks us in the first place because it calls
up a rush of emotive ideas with which the object before us is instantly
associated. The moment we have glanced at this statue the mind reg
isters; "Naked woman . . . half-human face . . . last stage of pregnancy
. . . ;" and then we can either turn away and seek elsewhere for some
thing pretty to look at— or stay and begin to contemplate an object
fashioned with hammer and chisel and a rare man's mind and spirit.
To begin with, it is important to realise that the images associated
with the words "Naked woman . . . half -human face . . . last stage of
pregnancy . * ." are not irrelevancies in the contemplation of this work.
Mr. Epstein's statue is called "Genesis," and it is in fact the embodiment
of a Genesis idea. Mr. Frank Dobson's statue, acquired last year for the
National Gallery, Millbank, was called "Truth"; but it was only called
"Truth" because it had to be called something to attract the subscrip
tions which made its acquisition by the nation possible; it might as ap
propriately have been called "Duty" or "Diana" or "Sophonisba,"
because Mr. Dobson was not thinking of sculpture as a means for the
expression of an idea that could be paralleled by any word or tide; he
was thinking of sculpture as an activity divorced from all other activ
ities and existing on its own resources as the expression of man's inter
est in and response to plastic form as such. But Mr. Epstein's statue
could not be entitled "Duty" or "Diana" or "Sophonisba." The word
3i8 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
"Genesis" here helps us to comprehension and sanctions the retention
of the first incoming associated ideas.
To appreciate this statue, therefore, we can, and must, retain our ini
tial emotive ideas and reconsider them in the light of the experience
provided by the statue. That the work enforces such reconsideration
is a sign, of course, of its unusual merit. It is not often that an artist can
drive us to re-examine our deep-seated attitude to the solemn facts of
life, birth and death. If an explorer were to discover Mr. Epstein's
"Genesis" to-morrow in an African jungle he would stand before it in
respectful wonder. "Here," he would say, "is primitive man's image of
the awful fact of parturition which in his mind results from an act of
destiny unconnected with the sexual act. Here is a pathetic being, a
mind uninstructed, hardly awakened, a lean body swollen to produce
another. Here is the first Mother." But when the same man discovers
it instead at the Leicester Galleries he is more likely to mutter the one
word "disgusting." „ . .
The truth is that we cannot begin to appreciate this "Genesis" until
we have forgotten our habitual environment, until the Leicester Gal
leries and our rival theories of sculpture, our civilisation of steel, speed
and comfort, the Prime Minister and "Miss 1931" have all faded from
our minds. As sheer sculpture, in the modern sense, this carving, in my
judgment, is a failure; the forms are not homogeneous, the plastic lan
guage is diverse, the flow of the lines downward suggests a falling body
rather than an, organisation rising upward from the ground. But this
carving must not be considered as sheer sculpture. It must be consid
ered as "Genesis," and, thus considered, the divergencies of the forms,
the contrasts of lightnesses and weight, aud die downward-forward
movement of the lines contribute to a significance which is undeniably
primeval and profound.
No other sculptor in England to-day could have produced this
"Genesis," because no other is mentally so removed from every-day
life as to be able to arrive at this primeval conception, and to rest tipon
it as sufficient. And no other modeller could have produced the por
trait bronzes that constitute the remainder of this exhibition, not only
because Mr, Epsteia is far and away the most skilful and powerful
modeller in this country— perhaps in Europe— but also because no other
sculptor, now that Romantic Movement is spent, regards the difference
between one young woman's head and another's as a matter of such
"GENESIS" AND THE JOURNALISTS 319
absorbing interest. To Mr. Epstein every form in each of these girl's
heads, every deviation from the average, has psychological significance,
and by recording these characteristics with his devastating skill and
dynamic energy, he has fashioned bronzes which are aspects of life
itself.
From the standpoint of the purist* amateur of sculpture, these bronzes
violate all canons; they suggest colour, and qualities such as sensuality,
intelligence, stupidity, breeding and under-breeding, which from clas
sical standards are no concern of the sculptor's art. But even the purist
must bow down before Romantic art of this compelling intensity, be
fore aEsther"—olive-skinned, dark-eyed, warm with the unconscious
sensuality of adolescence— and before "Isobel Powys," with the faun's
ears, aquamarine eyes, nervous mouth and intelligent brow. And no
one, I imagine, who has once seen Mr. Epstein's presentment of Lord
Rothermere is ever likely to forget it.
H. R. WlLENSKI.
The critic in the present instance makes a great point of the
lines of the carving flowing downwards, and calls the carving
unsuccessful for that reason. To his purist mind all forms must
build upwards. I need not quote a precedent, but if any were
needed I could point to the "Poggio" of Donatello in the Duomo
at Florence. The phrase "sheer sculpture in the modern sense" is
meaningless as used by the critic, as plastic qualities have not
changed since the Aurignacian.
APPENDIX VIII
"Behold the Man"
Under the following caption, the Sunday Pictorial had this to say:
A STATUE THAT SHOULD BE HIDDEN
Having seen for myself Jacob Epstein's new statue, "Behold the
Man," I can appreciate, and indeed, heartily sympathise with the feel
ings of those people whose sensibilities are offended by this grievous
monstrosity in marble, weighing seven tons.
The sculptor must be of a singularly optimistic nature to have hoped
to avoid a public outcry* If testimony were needed to the widespread
resentment which the ugly work has aroused, it is to be found in the
correspondence pouring in on our sister paper, the Daily Mirror, in
approval of its decision not to reproduce a photograph of the statue,
as well as in the question to be asked in the House of Commons to
morrow.
During my long journalistic career I have had much to say about
Epstein's "creations," both by way of praise and of blame, but quite
frankly, I do not remember an occasion when I have been more moved
to condemnation than the present.
Prepared beforehand to admire, I came away from a study of the
grotesque symbol saddened and disappointed, wondering why a gifted
artist, who can fashion clay and bronze into such admirable portraits,
need go so lamentably wrong*
And when I say this I have in mind, too, that much-criticised Ep
stein production which, for reasons known only to him, was labelled
"Genesis," and those graceless figures which are such an uninviting
feature of die London Underground headquarters.
As regards his latest "sensation"— one hesitates to use such an over-
"BEHOLD THE MAN"
worked term, but it is the only one applicable—beyond the wreath of
thorns, there is nothing outwardly visible to suggest Jesus; and with
equal appropriateness it could be labelled "Confucius," Who will not
recall the famous artist who, out of sheer mischief, insisted on describ
ing his pictures by the first suggestion that came into his head irrespec
tive of the fitness of the definition?
Alternatively, if, every time he perpetrated an atrocity, we are to
take Epstein seriously, then, judging his capacity to represent sacred
themes from the ugly effigy which he has now given us, it is our duty
to warn him that he is out of his element, and for the future would
be well advised to seek subjects more congenial to his talent. Obviously,
the sweet personality and benign atmosphere of Christ elude his heavy
imagination.
History scarcely knows an example of a long-lived artist or sculptor
who, at some period or other of his existence, did not produce work
below his genius. The most charitable remark to make about Epstein's
statue is to describe it as the product of one of his off-colour days.
They are not his best friends who persuade him otherwise, for if ever
a figure sinned lamentably against taste, it is this latest performance,
so sadly, nay, so absurdly, misnamed.
It is difficult to understand by what mental process a sculptor of
Epstein's experience reconciles his carving of a primitive man— sug
gestive, if of anything at all, of an Egyptian or Assyrian sculpture long
buried in the sand— with humanity's traditional idea of the Gentle
Shepherd, comely and somewhat tall, who walked in Judea nearly
2,000 years ago.
I say at once that, in this grotesque symbol, I fail to find any recog
nisable relationship to "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild," or taking the
records into account, to any known Nazarene type. We are far away
from Christ the Healer Who preached loving-kindness and we are
many worlds apart from the beautiful and spiritualised representations,
bequeathed to us by the great painters of old, to whom, as in prophetic
vision, was revealed the likeness of Christ,
I will go further. In Epstein's sullen and sombre effigy, I discern as
little historical reality, as spiritual or religious significance. On me the
statue makes the same impression as the totem poles of the Red Indians
—both intellectually and emotionally I am repelled.
Personally, I have yet to see any sense iti paintings, or carvings,
322 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
which are liable to be interpreted as direct challenges to religious con
ceptions, sanctified by Faith and tradition.
People grow up with a lovely idea of Christ in their minds, an idea
which, if allowed to influence all their actions in life, would render
this a much finer, and much more tolerable civilisation. What purpose
is served by confronting them with a harshly treated symbol, palpably
divorced from the familiar attributes of Jesus, Whose face shone with
pity towards all men?
Mr. Epstein should think, not only of the so-called intellectuals who,
to flatter him, may profess to see, in his monumental abstractions,
merits denied to ordinary eyes, but also of the generality of people
who, not being constituted on the same lines, cannot view his assaults
on traditional conceptions with cold cynical or amused detachment.
He should think of the feelings of the average child who, seeing in
some paper a reproduction of this effigy, may be affrighted to learn
that it is a well-known sculptor's 1935 version of Jesus.
If Mr. Epstein replies that he does not work for children, then I
make bold to ask: Wherein is he more greatly privileged than those
inspired masters, whose glorious paintings of Christ enrich the Na
tional Gallery, just a few hundred yards from where his own oppres
sive marble stands on exhibition? So far from being upset, no school
boy or schoolgirl can stroll through the Italian section of the Gallery
without his or her idea of Christ being ennobled.
Admirers of Epstein describe his ideal in stone as simplicity, coupled
with strength. But in "Behold the Man" there is not strength, but
crudeness and even a suspicion of coarseness. Rodin, on the other hand,
generally managed in his work to be strong and impressive, without
forfeiting a sense of rugged beauty.
We must not expect from Epstein the grace and beauty of those
magnificently gifted Greeks who 200 years before the Christian era,
with a thousand lovely fancies in marble and bronze, made civilisation
their debtors. But, in default of adding to our store of beautiful con
ceptions, he should not cause us to lose any.
If he cannot give us a stone portrait of Christ before which the re
ligious-minded can bow their heads in reverence and thanksgiving, let
him not affront us with a figure that does violence to treasured ideas.
Or, at least, if he is impelled to desert his true work* die small bronze
head, for these prodigies in stone, let turn have them shown n private,
"BEHOLD THE MAN" 3*3
for the benefit of the few whose sensibilities are proof against shock.
Otherwise, which would be regrettably unjust, Mr. Epstein is in
danger of having it said that he deliberately provokes these public out
cries. For my part, I have never suspected him of relishing the unpleas
ant advertisements to which certain of his work inevitably gives rise.
But has he ever thought how much higher his reputation would stand,
if it were not marred by these controversial statues, produced, as
though in desperation, at regular intervals?
Like most artists and sculptors, Mr. Epstein is not the best judge of
his own work, which explains why he continues to inflict upon us these
painful atrocities. I am prepared to hear that, in his mind, he had
formed a less inappropriate conception of Christ than his statue ex
presses. If this were indeed the case, then he has been unfortunate with
his medium; and doubly unfortunate not to have been told so before
its exhibition was arranged.
My own opinion is that Epstein's inspiration does not lend itself to
this kind of subject. He despises conventional beauty, and has little
consideration for ideals which do not appeal to his grey artistic con-
scijnce. Certainly, to have produced his deplorably inept statue he
must have been armed with the feeblest knowledge of the picture of
Jesus which lives in the hearts of most Christians.
There is, surely, enough ugliness in the world without one of our
leading sculptors, at the sacrifice of much time and painful effort, be
ing betrayed into supplementing its mass. For his monstrous creation,
Epstein, on aesthetic grounds alone, deserves to be reproved. But lack
of beauty would not, in itself, earn for the statue such widespread, and
almost wholly adverse, criticism. Mainly the indictment bases itself on
the insult, none the less real for being unintentional, proffered to aver
age religious susceptibilities.
No higher courage could be shown than for the sculptor, convinced,
we hope, by now that he has committed a grave blunder, to withdraw
his offensive statue from exhibition. Sinking his pride and obstinacy,
will Mr. Epstein be big enough and bold enough to rise to the occasion?
That is the question to which many people this week-end will be
anxiously awaiting an answer.
The gentleman, who wrote the foregoing was, I remember, an
editor, who published a weekly account by a certain Rev. Vale
324 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
Owen of a "Joumey into Heaven," which for sheer silliness out
did any of the Marble Arch spiritualists I had listened to on first
coming to London. I remember meeting him and remonstrating
with him for this attempt to gull the newspaper reader, and he
responded by saying gleefully, "But don't they fall for it. They
positively eat it up." That the public did not positively eat up
my message was natural, and evidently caused him to write the
solemn warnings and threats which he so liberally handed out.
On the other hand, the Daily Telegraph wrote:
The exhibition of recent sculpture by Jacob Epstein which opens on
Friday at the Leicester Galleries, is certain to arouse controversy. The
sport of playing policeman to this artist has become an annual event
for the more obstinate detractors of his work, and possibly they would
be disappointed if he gave them no occasion for it.
Sometimes he has provided it in plenty, but such is not the case this
year.
The chief feature of the show, a figure of Christ entitled "Behold
the Man," offers fascinating opportunity for discussion from the point
of view of aesthetics. Offence at it on other grounds suggests unrea
sonable haste in judgment, when it is not suspiciously artificial.
In any case, the qualities of the figure are so essentially sculpturesque
that it must be seen in order to be praised or condemned. No adequate
conception can be formed from photographic reproduction.
In Subiaco marble, weighing six tons and standing 1 1 ft high, it rep
resents Christ crowned with thorns and bound hands. It follows closely,
in its finished structure, the elongated cubic block from which it was
carved.
Even in the gallery it is not viewed at best advantages. The head is
over-size in proportion to the rest of the body— as is proper for seeing
it from below, on a tall pedestal or raised above the ground as a part
of a building. In the confines of a room it is unduly dwarfed.
But through all the mass there is a diffused energy inherent in its form
and ordered by a discipline of pattern. This force of impulse radiates
within the strictly-bounded shape. There is no violence of gesture, 00
sensational disturbance of the calm, straight pose, The effect is com
pelling and impressive.
"BEHOLD THE MAN" 325
The only strangeness in the work lies in the elimination of all but
the barest detail and the broad lines on which the features of the face
are indicated. But seen outside the limit of four walls, and at a greater
height, the economy of detail would be a benefit. Also, closer, facial
likeness would be wasted, and the rudimentary, formal features would
stand out more visibly.
It may always be debated whether definite likeness is helpful in re
ligious art, whether distraction from a greater purpose, is not caused
by realistic representation. Epstein's figure is nearly akin to the earliest
Romanesque Church sculpture, which with rough primitive shapes yet
triumphantly conveyed its idea. This symbolism has survived in peas
ant art and another relationship may be found in Breton religious
sculpture. Faith was never stronger than when the Romanesque
sculptors worked, and it was always ardent in the Breton carvers'
hearts. There is something of the spirit of these craftsmen in "Behold
the Man."
The most unwilling critics concede Epstein's power as a modeller.
The portrait bronzes at the exhibition display his accustomed skill.
They all are marked with the print of the sitter's character, swiftly
grasped, and all are splendidly alive. The subjects include Lord
Beaverbrook, Bernard Shaw, Hugh Walpole, Tiger King ("Man of
Aran"), and many women's heads, alert, with grace and vitality.
T.WJE.
Under the title "Sacrilege," the Daily Mirror started to influence
public opinion:
Controversy raged yesterday in the art world over Mr. Jacob Ep
stein's latest work, "Behold the Man," a piece of sculpture which, he
says, is his conception of Christ
And coincident with it came a large volume of support for the at
titude of the Daily Mirror in refusing, on the grounds that the famous
sculptor had made an error in associating such a grotesque symbol
with the Founder of Christianity, to publish a photograph of the work.
As early as 8,30 A.M. yesterday the Daily Mirror received the fol
lowing telephone messages:—
"I am only a working man and no authority on art, but I do con
sider your attitude towards Epstein's statue absolutely right,"
326 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
"I have seen the photograph of the statue, and I consider that it will
do immense harm, especially where children are concerned. How can
one reconcile this effigy with the average child's conception of the
Good Shepherd? You are greatly to be congratulated on the attitude
you have taken."
A letter which arrived from L. V. R. Harrow, by an early post,
stated: "Congratulations on the splendid example you set in refraining
from publishing Epstein's blasphemy of Christ."
"UGLY AND VILE"
Other opinions expressed to the Daily Mirror were;— Mr. G. K.
Chesterton: "It is an outrage, and I admire the Daily Mirror for refus
ing to publish a picture of the statue." "It is one of the greatest insults
to religion I have ever seen, and will offend the religious feelings of
the whole community."
Miss Mary Borden, author of the noted Mary of Nazareth; "I am an
admirer of Mr. Epstein, but in this case I think he has done something
outrageous. I feel, after looking at the picture, that he knows nothing
about the man he has called Christ and portrayed. I believe he has not
troubled to find out about Him, or His character, or His personality.
If he had, then he might have been inspired by hate, but I don't think
that is so, I think it is an abstraction of his own, and unfortunately it
is of a Man who is adored generally by the world."
Colonel Hamilton, an official of the Salvation Army expressed a simi
lar view, and said he congratulated the editor on refusing to publish
such a picture. "It is grotesque," he added, ". . . nothing more than sac
rilege, Words almost fail me."
The price Mr. Jacob Epstein is asking for his carving is 3,000 guineas.
April,
X W. Earp, in the Daily Telegraphy off-set outbursts like this
with a well-reasoned article:
Sculpture in England owes Mr, Epstein a considerable debt of grati
tude. He found it an exhausted art, devoted to academic exercise, con
scientious portraiture, and a small—almost codified— range of subjects.
Sometimes die commemoration of a national occasion or figure gave
"BEHOLD THE MAN" 3*7
an impulse to invention, though such distinction was not frequent in
the public monuments executed at the beginning of the century. The
beau ideal and a convention of the heroic, which had become sadly
mechanical, still held the field. But Mr. Epstein gave the art a new lease
of life. He brought to it an enthusiasm and an impetuous imagination
which broke its rigid mould. He enlarged its scope and originated a
spirit of experiment which to-day is showing the liveliest results.
Wth astonishing virtuosity, and frequently with something more, he
still keeps abreast of his disciples. He has put sculpture back into the
news and aroused a public interest in his own work that may occasion
ally be embarrassing. At his exhibition at the Leicester Galleries con
troversy rages as usual, this time over the large figure of Christ entitled
"Behold the Man." It should be noted, however, that no photograph
can give a fair conception of a figure so essentially sculpturesque, that
in the limits of a gallery room it is not seen under fair conditions, and
that the subject is one on whose treatment preconceived judgments
may have an unfair weight.
A particular kind of formal realism has so long been exercised on
religious themes in art that it may be forgotten that "Behold the Man"
has the authority of tradition behind it. The great mass of derivations
from the Gothic convention tends to obscure an unprejudiced view of
this work, which goes back to the Romanesque for its affinities, both in
symbolism and actual workmanship. It stands square and gestureless,
keeping closely in shape to the elongated cube of Subiaco marble from
which it is constructed. But an impressive energy radiates from the self-
contained rhythm of its volume, while its austere pattern, and the rudi
mentary indication of facial features, possess greater emotional content
than would a nearer approach to physical verisimilitude
From the Manchester Guardian, March 7, 1935:
EPSTEIN'S NEW SCULPTURES
"BEHOLD THE MAN"
In his colossal figure "Behold the Man!" at his exhibition in the Leices
ter Galleries Mr. Jacob Epstein returns again to the idea of Christ.
Ten years ago he carved a standing figure of Christ with die nail-marks
in his hands after the Resurrection. He also made a great bronze of the
328 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
Virgin and the child Christ. The present sculpture stands eleven feet
high, carved of Subiaco marble. It is too large for the gallery, but this
crampedness intensifies the sense of crushing agony bearing upon the
squat enduring figure crowned with thorns. The gigantic head, the
bracing of the chest, the square rock-like shape of the whole with its
shallow modelling suggests a caryatid of sujff ering.
The sculptor never explains his sculptures. Whatever they have to
say is there in the language of his art. Did he intend to convey the idea
of the unending sorrows of the Master whose teachings were denied by
the world every day and of that cumulative denial crushing down upon
him? Some saw in his former figure, Christ crucified every day. As in
all his work, racial feeling is somehow there, and one is aware of a
further conception of the race of Christ suffering through the centuries
and terribly in our day. It is the most impressive of Mr. Epstein's great
stone figures, and seems a culmination of his carvings on architecture
on the Underground building and his other large relief carvings. There
is something of the keystone in the squared, compact shape of the
figure, narrowing from its tremendous head. . . .
From the Spectator, March 15, 1935:
ART
AND RELIGIOUS ART
No society is likely to produce a strong and steady stream of re
ligious art unless religion plays an active part in the life of the society
itself. At the present day, therefore, when, religion is no longer a domi
nant factor in ,lffe it would be foolish to expect any outburst of re
ligious art directed towards the satisfaction of a general, popular demand,
On the other hand, there is no reason why individual works of
art expressing religious ideas should not be produced even in an at
mosphere of general indifference to religion such as exists to-day. This
has often happened in the past; at die time of the early Renaissance,
when science was replacing religion, it was possible for Masaccio to
paint pictures almost unrivalled for intensity of religious feeling, and
at the end of the eighteenth century, the general indifference around
him, did not prevent Bkke from expressing his personal religious views
in poetty or engraving.
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"BEHOLD THE MAN" 329
But though it is possible for religious art to be produced in non-re
ligious periods, it will be different in kind from that produced when
religion is itself in the ascendant. Blake is different from a Gothic
sculptor in that he is aware of the opposition to what he wishes to
express. He is therefore a self-conscious artist and his art a minority
art, whereas the sculptors of Chartres were, from the point of view of
their religion, unself-conscious and satisfying the demands of a
majority.
The situation to-day is closer to that of the late eighteenth century
than to that of the middle ages. Religion is a minority interest and any
religious art must be a minority art, but if we are to have any religious
art at all to-day, it looks as though Mr. Epstein is on the right track
towards creating it.
His new statue, "Behold the Man!" on view at the Leicester Galleries,
is unquestionably a work of religious art, but it represents an approach
to the problem new at any rate in England. The great difficulty which
has faced religious artists in Europe for about a century is that our
natural tradition for expressing religious feeling is utterly used up
and dead. During the nineteenth century a series of attempts were made
to revive the tradition by going back to what were imagined to be the
true sources of the religious style. The Gothic revivalists turned back
to the architecture of their own middle ages; the Pre-Raphaelites to
the early Italians and to mediaeval artists; in the more recent times
frantic attempts have been made to put life into religious scenes by
giving them modern settings and dresses.
Mr. Epstein has approached the problem differently. His interest in
the arts of the savage races was started, we may imagine, by realising
that they offered a new way of looking at the material world, that they
were based on formal principles wholly different from those of Euro
pean art. But this more or less technical interest in savage art seems to
have led Mr. Epstein to feel further that these artists also offered a new
way of making statements about the supernatural. True, the religious
and superstitious ideas which they sought to express were remote from
those of Christianity, but at any rate they both existed on the same
supernatural plane, and it would be worth trying whether their
methods could not be adapted to the needs of European art.
This seems to be what Mr. Epstein has tried to do in "Behold the
Man!" He has vivified European religious art by an infusion of dark
33o LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
blood, itself not pure, but drawn from the African, the Aztec and
many other races. The first result of his experiment is not perhaps in
every way a success, but before judging it we must estimate the diffi
culties in the artist's way. There was much sentimentality and clap
trap to be cleared away from the idea of religious art, and there was
the problem of applying savage principles to a Christian theme. Mr.
Epstein was, therefore, forced to concentrate on the absolute essentials
of his problem, and this may account for the almost too great simplicity
of expression, which we can imagine being elaborated in later works of
the same kind. In a sense, however, this extreme simplicity makes the
statue the more suitable to be placed in a church, where it would be
seen from a distance and would make its appeal instantly. Those priests
who have said that they would be glad to see the statue in their own
church might well find, that apart from delivering a few severe shocks,
it would admirably fulfil its function as an Image.
ANTHONY BLUNT
APPENDIX IX
"Consummatum Est"
From the Star, October 27, 1937:
So Mr. Epstein has done it again! If the famous sculptor has any
sense of humour, it certainly must amuse him to find that, from time
to time, when he offers to the world one of his famous statues, a sec
tion of the public goes off into almost hysterical lamentation and con
demnation and calls his work an outrage.
I have been rung up on the telephone and written to by several
newspapers (not the Star) asking for comments on the latest work,
which is called "Consummatum Est." It represents the recumbent figure
of Christ after he had been taken down from the Cross.
I have only seen photographs of this statue, and to judge by photo
graphs is as unfair as it would be to judge a great piece of orchestral
music by hearing it played on an indifferent gramaphone, and at the
same time to be slightly intoxicated and a little deaf.
In the first place, this new statue ought to be observed from above.
And any work of art can only really be intelligently commented upon
when one has not only looked at it, or in the case of music heard it
well rendered, but as it were, lived with it, meditated in its presence
for some considerable time.
Yet there are certain things which we can say about Mr. Epstein's
work which, at any rate, ought to be able to keep us from the attacks
of hysteria to which I have referred.
Let us ask and try to answer one or two questions. The first is, is
Mr. Epstein making a practical joke? Has he got his tongue in his
cheek? Is h§ wily playing with us?
33*
332 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
Surely there can be only one answer to such questions. A great artist
does not spend months and months of his time carving away at two
and a half tons of stone or alabaster merely to make a rather bad prac
tical joke. Yet, merely to answer that question would cut out a great
deal of the criticism with which Mr. Epstein's work is continually met.
Let us ask another question. Is Mr. Epstein capable of the kind of
sculpture which meets with wide approval? When the hysterics have
uttered all their maledictions, let us ask: Is Mr. Epstein capable of doing
the kind of sculptoral work which would meet with their warm ap
proval and enthusiasm?
The answer indubitably is that he is capable, I have visited galleries
and seen examples of Mr. Epstein's work which are most moving in
their simple beauty.
If this is a true answer to the question, then that consideration of
itself should silence a great many foolish criticisms which have been
levelled at this famous sculptor.
Another question might be asked. Is Mr. Epstein a really great
sculptor? The answer here again is indubitably that he is. If he were
not, this tremendous interest in his work would not be shown by the
general public, and would certainly not be shown by the connoisseurs.
Having answered these questions we are face to face with this issue:
In viewing the statue "Genesis** or in viewing this new work, "Con-
summatum Est," here is a famous sculptor, admittedly a very great
artist indeed, many of whose works command the admiration of all,
offering to the public a serious work of ait*
What is our reaction going to be to it? The questions we have al
ready asked and answered do away with a good deal of silly and ig
norant criticism. I think our attitude must be, that we have to sit down
reverently and meditatively In the presence of great art and ask our
selves what Mr. Jacob Epstein is trying to say.
Let me say at once that no one who is not a student of art in the
strict sense— having had a definite training in art— can hope to deal ade
quately with th^i work of a master, especially such a master as Epstein.
I am not a student of art, and my opinions about the work he has
called "Consummatum Esc" ore of no more value than those of the
man in the street, and perhaps it is foolish to rash in where qualified
critics fear to tread, and where it would take an Epstein perhaps to
interpret an Epstein*
"CONSUMMATUM EST" 333
I should have to admit at once that when I first saw the photographs
of this new work of Christ I felt it to be revolting, repulsive, even hor
rible. Most of us are particularly sensitive about all efforts to portray
Christ, and we have never even seen the pictures of great artists which
wholly satisfy us.
Some of the pictures satisfy us concerning one aspect of his nature,
and yet we feel that the picture is either too effeminate on the one
hand, or perhaps too stern on the other hand, and nothing is entirely
satisfying.
If this be true, then the statue is likely to leave us very dissatisfied.
But this is a very different thing from saying that it is to be wholly
condemned. If the hands and feet seem ungainly, and the whole thing
seems monstrous, we can rule out that it is because Epstein cannot
chisel beautiful hands and feet. We must try to realise surely that the
artist is not trying to offer a photograph of Christ. If he were, we
should have another of those beautiful, but conventional statues of
Christ, such as, for instance, Thorwaldsen's masterpiece. His statue of
Christ, which is called "Come unto Me," is the most entirely satisfying
representation of Christ I have ever seen.
I should like to describe an experience I had when I saw Epstein's
statue called "Genesis" for the first time. Photographs of it seen before
hand were utterly revolting. But when I went into a certain gallery and
stood looking at "Genesis" for some time, it produced in me emotions
of mystery, humility, wonder and even awe. It seemed to me as though
the whole work was a parable of evolution.
If that is so, we might call the figure Nature herself, pregnant with
some unborn life which she guards with huge and powerful hands,
brooding, meanwhile, upon the mystery of birth, the great drama of
the history of this planet, which the beginning of man evolves.
It is good for us sometimes to let our minds linger on the patient
processes of God from which we were brought forth. Epstein's statue
moved me to the depths, because, in terms of white marble it is a
parable of evolution. It reminds me of "The pit from which I was
digged," that the sublime thing that we call man the crowning glory
of natural processes, has arisen not only from the brute but from the
warm sHme of seas that moved upon the face of the earth unthinkable
centuries ago. It is good for man to feel that; to be humbled and awed,
and moved to the depths by being taken back, by some such simple
334 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
way as Epstein has devised, to his own origin. The statue was the first
chapter of Genesis in marble.
The new statue is the last chapter of the Gospels in marble or rather
the last but one, for the last is a living, radiant, all-conquering Christ,
going out to conquer the world.
I confess that photographs of the last statue leave me cold, but I am,
at any rate humble enough to know my own limitations, and to realise
that when I am in the presence of the statue and sit down quietly and
ask what Mr. Epstein means, I shall realise that it is not my place to
criticise genius. It is my place to sit down and listen and look. I shall
expect that some new meaning about the Christ will leap out of the
stone. I shall expect to find all tendency to criticise hushed in the reve
lation of some new message, the kind of message which only springs
from the soul of the creative artist.
THE REV. LESLIE D. WEATHERHEAD, M.A.
Minister of the City Temple, London,
In Truth, 1937, appeared the following:
EPSTEIN AND HIS PUBLIC
There is no doubt by now that Mr. Epstein is a very great artist. He
has been insulted long enough to establish that as a fact I offer this
evidence advisedly, because very few indeed of us understand much
of him without long and patient visits to his work. True enough, I
heard a loud voice at the private view of his new show at the Leicester
Galleries, declaring it nonsense to call Epstein difficult* but I have
heard that self-same voice jarring on other Leicester shows of Epstein.
Mr. Epstein is difficult because he is original He has a new way of
seeing. This puzzles the beholder, and no one can enjoy a work of art
and puzzle over it at the same time. We must get used to Mm before
we can enjoy him, and during the process the righteous and the self-
righteous, a learned Judge, a young man in plus-fours, a popular sci
entist, Hyde Park orators, all raise Cain. Art experts tremble for their
reputations, reactionary politicians smell revolution* and revolutionary
politicians smell reaction. It is rather a pitiful story, but there are still
the thousands who approach sculpture with decent modesty; those
who, when they fail to understand, realise that the fault may be in
themselves and not in Mr. Epstein. "I certakly will not «plain my
"CONSUMMATUM EST" 335
work," says Mr. Epstein to Mr. Arnold Haskell in The Sculptor Speaks.
He does explain that no artist can explain his own work and, in talking
with scholarly modesty of the work of others, he puts us on the road
to understanding his own.
The hullabaloo round Mr. Epstein is monotonously like the hullaba
loo round every great artist since the 'sixties, since Manet's "Olympia."
Every artist since then whose reputation has increased with the years
has been the centre of just such a fuss—Cezanne, Van Gogh, Rodin
and the rest.
Mr. Haskell tells of a reputed sculptor who said, "Epstein does not
know the A.B.C. of sculpture." A perfect echo this of the Salonists
who said that Degas could not draw; but in the Battle of Rima a very
large number of R.A.'s, including Sir William Llewellyn, supported
Mr. Epstein, although he, himself, and all his works proclaim inevitable
opposition to their "Pompier" art. There may be some slight consola
tion in this, for only one established artist, I think, Carolus Duran, put
in a word for the original painters in Paris when they could have done
with it.
Original artists have been abused since time began, and Pheidias was
even persecuted, Pheidias lived under democracy. Democracy both
maltreats an original artist and gives him his chance, for the artist can
find enough patrons to keep him alive. It has been under the democracy
of nineteenth-century France that original artists have had their chance
to attack the worn-out tradition of the Renaissance. Hence nearly every
big artist since the middle of the last century has been an original artist
facing the full tide of democratic indignation. Hence these dreary
howls.
There has been a small sideshow of the attack in democratic England.
We had our Pre-Raphaelites, our Ruskin versus Whistler, our flutter
in the 'nineties, and so on. In more recent times, Mr. Sickert and the
Camden Town Group, Mr. John and Mr. Spencer, have had their
honourable share of insults* Our other rebels mostly parade their
originality in cast-off models from Paris, This matter of abuse has got
to such a pass that a recent group, the Surrealists, deliberately court
abuse as an essential.
Anyone can bring the most maidenly of aunts to this Leicester exhi
bition of Epstein. It is a collection of busts, a half-length of Haile
Selassie, and the "Consummatum Est," which is a Christ displaying
336 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
wounded hands and feet. Quite a false impression is given by the
photographs of it that I have seen published hitherto. Although we
must be too near to appreciate it thoroughly, that peculiar tragic ten
derness combined with strength which is never absent from Epstein is
given full play in this big statue. In a bust and in the Haile Selassie we
are treated to the marvellous expression that Epstein can get out of
hands. In the latter statue the hands, coming out of a mass of robed
body, give vibrant life to the whole. One could apply the well-worn
epithets of the best portraiture to the busts. Mr. Epstein's outstanding
trait as a portaitist may be his insistence on the difference between the
two sides of the face. The bronzes seem to breathe and to have the soft
mobility of flesh. The rhythm and the balance of line and mass is
at once archaic and new. It is new because the artist is original, and
archaic because he has studied first hand at the sources of ancient art.
he could not be really original without being really traditional He is
not traditional in the third-hand rule-of-the-thumb way of the Acad
emies, but has studied the greater art of the past thoughtfully from
examples, learning such lessons as he has needed.
"Modern Paris" is the first answer to "What is the style?" He studied
there; but Paris may mean almost anything, and is a superficial answer
anyway. Some have said he has based himself on negro sculpture.
He has learned from it as he has learned from Greece and from Italy*
Picasso, Roualt, Derain, and other moderns have also learned from
negro sculpture.
It is a recent influence on our art, and so it often blinds criticism to
all other influences. Mr. Epstein half admits to Mr. Haskell that he may
have learned most from Donatello.
The stunt Press will not do much with this show* The Epstein "sen
sation" is getting stale. He will soon be considered respectable, or even
a martyr, Meanwhile, Mr. Epstein goes on working.
ROBERT JESSEL
From the New English Weekly, October 28, 1937;
Everyone just now is trooping to the Leicester Galleries to sec
Mr. Epstein's new recumbent colossus* It is a serious piece of sculpture,
very well worth seeing. It should not have been shown, however, in
a small gallery. One has the sensation of viewing an elephant m its
"CONSUMMATUM EST" 337
cage, or an engine in its shed. These things require to be seen in a more
appropriate and spacious habitat. Or it is as if a new symphony had
to endure its premiere in a summer-house.
In the circumstances, it is not an easy work to review. It is a vast
block of alabaster, hewn into an agreeable, forceful, though not I think
wholly satisfactory, system of shapes. Where the plastic quality ends
and the rather gloomy streak of naturalism begins it is difficult to say,
but certain it is that the two exist side by side, somewhat uncomfort
ably. It is interesting to compare with other works by Mr. Epstein, In
the same class, such as "Behold the Man" and "Night" and "Day." It
lacks some of the dramatic power of those works; it gains in dignity
and simplicity. Shorn of the kind of non-plastic excrescences that
spoiled, sculpturally, those works, the new piece nevertheless fails to
make use of the plastic possibilities of what remains. One has only to
compare it (and that the comparison is possible is a tribute to it), with
a piece of early Chinese or Egyptian statuary to feel that it lacks the
placidity of the one and the dynamism of the other. It is, in fact, as
usual, a compromise; and those who feel uneasy about its form, to
gether with those who are repelled by its inhuman bleakness, will have
to fall back, as usual, to speculating on the meaning of the title: "Con-
summatum Est." The sensationalism implicit in its bulk no less than in
its symbolical "content" is intimidating.
Once more many of us will turn with relief to the contemplation of
Mr. Epstein's miraculous portrait-busts. Here the attack is direct:
there is no compromise, no fumbling, but the complete mastery of a
highly personal game. Whether the busts are "good sculpture" or not
is beside the point. Each is a triumph of successful interpretation. They
set out to do something useful— to seize and fix the psyche of a con
temporary personage— and they achieve that end. The big monoliths
set out to do something more ambitious and perhaps less worth while.
It is sad, but the new Christ doesn't quite come off, and there it is. At
least, I am one of a number of admirers of Epstein's genius who feel
that way about it; and I cannot see that any useful purpose is served
by pretending that better sculpture is not accessible, even if there isn't
very much of it about*
One of the disadvantages of attempting anything on the gigantic
scale is that, if it doesn't quite "come off," there is a natural temptation
to pass it off, even upon oneself, as if it had. It must be extremely gall-
338 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
ing for a man who has spent months or years of hard labour in hacking
a cliff into the semblance of a figure, or in painting an acre of canvas,
or in writing a million-word book, to find at the end of it all the thing
has failed. Even to recognise the fact to oneself would take a good deal
more honesty and courage than common men possess. And it is only
the rare artist who has the nerve to destroy, in such cases. On the
analogy of "prevention is better than cure" the colossal in art should
perhaps be avoided always. The urge "to do something big" is a con
stant spur to genius. It is, however, a pity that it should so often take
the unfortunate form of something merely physically big.
MY DEFENCE OF EPSTEIN
By the Rev. Albert Belden, D.E.,
Minister of White-fields Tabernacle.
Now that the latest Epstein controversy has somewhat subsided, it is
high time that, in the interests of freedom and truth, we should realise,
from his case, that it is the height of folly for a community to fail in
granting to its artists as well as to its prophets the utmost toleration.
After all, the artists do not rob us of our freedom, we are not obliged
to accept or approve of their work. But if we, on the other hand, seek
to dictate terms to them and actually threaten to destroy their work
because, forsooth, we do not like it, if we ridicule and persecute them,
we run the risk of cheating ourselves of great and vital advances in art
and some precious works of genius.
The trouble is that so many of us will not approach the work of our
artists with sufficient humility. It is, of course, a painful thing to be
abruptly challenged in our judgment, and, of course, we tend to
shrink into ourselves upon the thing that shocks, by hasty rejection,
but this is neither dignified nor wise.
Yet many have had to confess that after the first shock, when they
have patiently and reverently studied Epstein's various productions,
they have been impelled to revise their first hasty feelings.
Such achievements of his as the "Madonna and Child/' and "Night"
and "Day" do at first alarm tis by their breakaway from the conven
tional art to which we have grown all too used, but when we study
these figures for a little while more closely and see the magnificent
"CONSUMMATUM EST" 339
humanity of the "Madonna and Child," marking the intense expectancy
of their gaze, the hands of the Madonna placed so protectingly about
the Child, we can see how eloquent and beautiful this sculpture is.
In this spirit let us approach Epstein's much discussed "Christ"
statues. Let us begin by assuming that he is utterly reverent in his at
titude to Christ, which is substantiated by his own statement in that
fascinating volume, The Sculptor Speaks.
The first statue, which appeared in bronze some years ago, presented
an extraordinarily tall figure, philosophic in aspect, breathing an at
mosphere of remorseless rigidity and of an implacable sternness, with
one wounded hand pointing to the wound in the other.
The second statue of Christ— exhibited a while ago at the Leicester
Galleries— is a very different one, and even more meaningful.
A colossal figure, some n feet in height, in white stone, is seated
with its massive hands bound together about the wrists. The face is
majestic with suffering and strength, with blood-gouts dripping
from it.
This effort was most cruelly received, especially by the people who
should know better than to use the usual jibe of "Easter Island Idol"
that has been hurled at it.
Let us, however, look a little more closely, and remember especially
perspective. A colossal image, evidently built for colossal surroundings,
must, of necessity, have a large nose and heavy lips, if they are to count
for anything at a considerable distance.
Then, too, can the statue be called ugly? Must our conception of
beauty be limited to the Anglo-Saxon type, which comprises, after all,
only a small proportion of the human race?
The average person is inclined to think that the bulk of the human
race is ugly; but, as a matter of fact, the average person's conception
of beauty is extraordinarily limited, and is made up largely of what is
familiar, a love for regular lines with certain orthodox curves.
His latest figure, of the Prone Christ, is possibly the fiercest satire
upon current Christianity ever perpetrated in stone.
The rejected Prince of Peace is lying as though in death. Upturned
in an attitude of helpless resignation are those hands wounded for the
world. The mouth is turned down at the corners as with unbearable
pain. The upp©r part of the body is taut with the effort to rise, but the
340 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
legs and feet pin the gigantic figure to the ground as though death had
seized them.
As a penetrating critic has said, it is as though Christ were saying
to the world, "I have done what I can. What more can I do? You
killed Me, now apparently you are determined to kill yourselves."
No wonder the sculpture is entitled "It is Finished." Is it Epstein's
belief that in the toleration of modern war, Christianity has indeed
come within sight of its end?
Nothing has been more unjust to Epstein than to assume, as has
been stated in more than one paper, that he puts forward his statues as
portraits of Christ. How can they be, when there is no standard por
trait of Jesus?
Epstein would be the first to say: "Here is something about Christ
that I feel I must tell my generation, and it is nothing more than an
interpretation of Christ in relation to the world of my time." If we
take his statues in this sense, has Christendom no use for the Accusing
Christ? Is it so free of sin and shame as not to find that challenge
healthy once again?
It is more than probable that in these last efforts of Epstein's to in
terpret Christ, there are strong sub-conscious elements. Does not the
great artist really express the subconsciousness of his age— namely, that
which lies behind its pretence and is repressed and denied in its actual
living, the ideas and facts it runs away from, and yet which are essential
to its recovery of truth.
A final element is perhaps by no means clear even to Epstein him
self. There is reason to believe that as every epoch of civilisation draws
to its close, art tends towards the "Colossal"; the sense of doom creates
a striving after material immortality.
It is as though the subconsciousness of Epstein were saying: "This
modern civilisation of ours cannot endure, and so I will give the New
Zealander who will one day stand upon the ruins of London Bridge,
something really worth retrieving from the sands of oblivion in which
the one-time Metropolis will be at last buried."
One would suspect, therefore, that Epstein is definitely pessimistic
of the trend of modem civilisation, and through the genius of his art
is endeavouring to warn us of this possible, though act certain, doom,
Let our generation then beware how it refuses the Voice of God in
the work of Jacob Epstein*
"CONSUMMATUM EST" 341
From the News Chronicle, October 28, 1937:
Whenever Jacob Epstein produces a major piece of sculpture there
comes from all sides a flood of abuse; and some of it, were it directed
against anyone other than this very tolerant artist, would be consid
ered libellous in any court of law.
I should like to state as clearly as I can where his carvings stand in
relation to art, if not in relation to the panic-stricken, emotional re
action of that section of the loud-voiced public which is heard more
often than met or seen.
The general confusion arises from the fact that whereas in music,
literature and the drama it is recognised that there are different kinds,
each with its own qualities, there is no such recognition of different
kinds of sculpture.
To the man-in-the-street it is either good or bad, according to
whichever mouthpiece provides his ready-made aesthetic fare in the
daily Press.
As there were in the old days of the Scottish clans three distinct
types of pipe music called the small music, the middle music and the
big music, represented respectively by marches, dance music, and the
pibroch, so in painting and sculpture there is a similar classification.
And these three categories of art may be placed in the following order:
(a) Reportage.
(b) Interpretation.
(c) Creation.
Reporting in painting or in sculpture consists of making a faithful
and accurate copy of the particular subject.
It required a certain degree of expert craftsmanship, but little cre
ative ability— none, in fact. A number of lurid touches may be added
here and there to attain effectiveness, in much the same way as a good
reporter of police court proceedings may embellish his write-up to
make it more readable.
Reporting in painting or sculpture, may be called Small Art, and,
of its kind, may be good or bad.
The second class of art, Interpretation, demands, for its success,
that the artist have some unique quality of personality, which comes
through the work and gives to it a greater intensity.
342 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
He interprets the subject in such a way that the spectator gets from
it something fresh and new that hitherto has been hidden from him.
The subject, after flowing through the artist, is made more vivid.
There is a little creation here; but very little. The artist is giving to
the spectator the benefit of his more interesting reaction to the
subject-matter.
This kind of art might be called the Middle Art, and has its good
and bad examples. Epstein's modelled heads are among the best ex
amples of interpretive art.
In order to understand Big, or Major Art, it may be best to quote
from Nietzsche: "The artist has the ability not to react to immediate
stimuli."
In the major work of art the subject or idea, when first perceived
or conceived, is allowed to sink down into the deeper levels of the
artist's creative sources, where it is shaped and reshaped, and im
bued with vitality and organic unity, not only through his present
life experience, but also through the long-lived memories of that little
part of him which has endured from all time through his ancestry—
that little speck within him which links him with Adam and the
beginning of all things.
In so far as it reaches to these early sources can the major work of
art be said to be Primitive.
It is almost a biological act. Every major work of art embodies
these creative birth-pangs, and for this reason it is at times lacking
in the pleasant suavity of the two lesser forms of art.
For the same reason the grammar used in its expression is so free
from fashionable colloquialism and its technique must needs be so
stark in its logic that those who accept only the immediate and con
ventional values of our present mad civilisation are bound to be
shocked by it.
In the two lesser forms of art, Reportage and Interpretation for
instance, it may be legitimate for the sculptor to make his stone look
like human flesh or, for that matter, butter; but when a sculptor is
creating a major work he must allow the stone the logic of its own
hard nature.
His idea mmt be expressed in $tone> as stone; remaining all the time
stone, but stone with a new vitality and power added to it. Not all
major art is successful. There are many failures, for the task is greater.
"CONSUMMATUM EST" 343
In a democracy of free peoples there are four possible attitudes to
a work of this kind. You do not understand it, but like it all the same.
You do not understand it, and do not like it. You understand it and
like it. Or you understand it, and do not like it. And that is all that
can be said. There is no need for hysteria.
This latest work by Epstein, "Consummatum Est," satisfies the laws
of a major work of art. It is logically conceived and rendered in stone.
It is no mere reporting or transcribing of naturalistic shapes. It is an
act of creation.
It is not an immediate and facile reaction to the subject. It has
power, vitality and organic unity. In my opinion it comes off.
Leave Epstein alone and your children will bless you in days to
come. Strangle him by abuse and receive the immediate blessings of
Dr. Goebbels and his band of tenth-rate reporters in paint and plaster
who are leading a nation to cultural suicide.
WILLIAM
The Roman Catholic Universe, November 5, 1937, comments
on the statue as follows:
November 5th, 1937.
What is all this about Mr. Epstein or Mr. Einstein or whoever it is?
I know one invented Relativity and the other Bima, only I never
remember which is which. Probably because I can't make head or tail
of either.
But to which ever gentleman it is he who says time doesn't exist,
I would put one question. Has he ever done it? Because, if so, he'd
find out something. I don't mean I've done time in the prison way,
of course; but there was the army, and doesn't time just count! And
it's no use your proving that you are the Emperor Napoleon and
really in the last century, when the provost-sergeant has it in his
head that you're a defaulter with the next eighty days to do.
The new statue-thing I don't understand either. From the pictures
it only looks to me like a child's first attempt in plasticine, the sort
of unfortunate child who later gets looked at by a doctor and sent
to a home. But of course I'm not an art critic; nor do I believe it's
going to have the faintest effect on religion one way or the other. For
I'm old enough to remember other "modernisms" that passed. There
344 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
was what I fancy we called "New Art," and it was really photo-frames
of a sort of tarnished imitation-silver that you put on the top of the
piano. Well, that was ugly enough, but it never affected religion
much.
There was Aubrey Beardsley, and he did rather queer pictures that
looked vaguely unpleasant. They were the absolute last word in their
day, and people said they were going to revolutionise civilisation. And
other people said they were too, too utterly wicked for anything.
Well, I saw some last week in a second-hand shop just marked
"quaint"; they may have been thirty years old. But the Madonnas and
Crucifixions of the masters have lasted some centuries; and you can't
buy them for eighteenpence! I don't know that the Catholic Church
need worry too much about this new statue-thing.
With the following from the Weekly Dispatch, October 31,
1937, "by John Macadam (Sports Editor)" I will finish with the
gutter-snipe crew:
Who am I to wonder about Epstein and his Christ? And yet, who
am I not? My business is with footballers and boxers and jockeys—
not with art.
Only, what has this piece of sculpture to do with art? And what
has it to do with Christ; at least with the Christ I have in my mind?
What skill has Epstein plied on that marble with his chisel that I
could not have plied?
Questioning . . . That's what it does to you. It is unavoidable.
Look at it. This Christ has been taken down from the Cross. He
is laid out in a vast shapeless shroud that allows only His feet to pro
trude . . , great flat feet with square toes upturned; on the soles and
through to the tops, the nail marks.
A PARSON
As I stood looking at it, a parson took his place beside me. He pon
dered for a moment and I could feel him looking at me as if to test
my reactions.
"Are you a religious man?" he asked, and I said, "Not particularly,"
and quoting from Omar as well as I could remember, added that I
should "come out by that same door as ia I went"
"CONSUMMATUM EST" 345
He looked back at the recumbent figure and said, "It baffles me
too."
I looked again at the face. Couldn't I have done that? Couldn't I
have chiselled-supposing I had the little ability I have with a chisel
that I have with a typewriter— those plain lines, that domed, sloping-
away head, the curved ridge of a nose?
Couldn't I?
Whatever mystery the piece has as a whole, there is no mystery
about the sculpting of it. There is no subtle line to sway an emotion,
no delicate nuance in marble to point a moral.
is IT UGLY?
Only this shapeless mass boldly chiselled in ugliness. And yet... is
that right? I have been looking at it for half an hour now, and it
does not startle me as it did when I came on it first.
Is this ugly, or is my conventional conception of Christ, derived
through Watts and the Italians, merely chocolate-box?
Or, if it is ugly, isn't that what Epstein means it to be; symbolic of
the ugliness of suffering?
Suppose I could have chiselled these lines, there is the certainty in
my mind that I could not have made their squat shapelessness cry out
as Epstein does*
THOSE HANDS
The beautifully modelled arms with nail-torn palms turned up sup
plicate. It is these hands that dwell with me now that I am away from
the piece.
The face is a dead face, and the thick gross body is a dead body.
fiut the arms and hands seem to live on; seem to say: "Is it nothing to
you, all ye that pass by?"
But, for the rest, what?
Is this the body of a Christ who rose from the grave? Does it look
as if it could ever move again? To me, it does not. I am given the pic
ture of a hopeless, despairing man done cruelly to death by those
whom He loved; showing them the wounds they have made. For what?
I didn't know, nor did the parson by my side.
Nor did many of the spectators, mosdy women; particularly the
346 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
pretty one who consented to be photographed in an attitude of Adora
tion . . .
Still, it had something, for the chattering with which they made
their way round the busts in the outside rooms was hushed to a
reverent whisper as they approached the figure in the inner place.
There was no laughter or giggling; only a sort of wonder.
WONDERING PITY
Myself, I was filled, after a time, with a wondering pity— much the
same kind of emotion as I experienced the first time I saw Primo
Camera lumbering around the ring in the Albert Hall. I should say
the same kind of pity any of you would feel for a grotesque.
It is not a figure of hope, or promise of things to come in the Here
after. It is a pitiful outside in Death.
Whether these things I have thought come from Christ or whether
they come from me I do not know. I am still left with the memory
of that shapeless husk and the wondering feeling that I could have
done it myself. Or you.
Now the heavy-weight critic of the Times has a go, As usual he
is a quibbler for formula and with clever insinuation would con
vince his readers that it is a mistake that I should be alive at all He
implies that with all my skill and labor I do not understand the
tragic significance of the words "It is Finished" as well as he
does! And in his final "wrong thing done very well indeed" de
stroys himself with his own cleverness, but I think he should be
quoted in full to give one the really fine flavor of one of our more
pretentious critics.
As is usual when he shows his work Mr. Jacob Epstein the great
artist and Mr. Jacob Epstein the Great Artist are represented in. his
present exhibition at the Leicester Galleries, How far the latter is at
che expense of the former must be left to his own judgment All the
ocessary crititism of "Consummatum Estn is contained in the tide.
That is to say Mr. Epstein has used many hundred weights of alabaster
to say a great deal less than is contained in two words, or, if you
prefer the English "It is Finished," three, la emotional comparison it
"CONSUMMATUM EST" 347
is as if one said "Bo!" in a thunderstorm. But one either feels the
tragic finality of the words "It is Finished" or does not, and therefore,
argument is useless. Mantegna's "Dead Christ," which might seem to
bear upon the question, bears heavily the wrong way for Mr. Epstein,
because it makes no attempt to embody the emotional content of the
words.
In comparison with the artistic stupidity implied in its conception
all the other criticisms which are likely to be passed on the work—
whether the feet are or are not too big, whether the supinated fore
arms are or are not anatomically correct, and whether or not the
incised treatment of the features is right— are artistically irrelevant. In
matters of composition— the parallel disposition of the limbs and the
enclosure of the work in an imaginary rectangle— and of execution—
the degree of anatomical realisation attempted, surface finish, and so
forth— "Consummatum Est" has great merits. It is the wrong thing
done very well indeed. , . .
The peculiarities of this technique of criticism will be apparent.
To start with, there is praise, what seems to be a generous ap
preciation, then a "still, small Voice" intervenes, and by the time
the critic is through with you, no shred is left, you are stripped
bare of all honor and are only a poor wight to be pitied. In this
case in order to appear to exhibit an unprejudiced mind, the jam
is put on at the end. Certainly, were I as good as these critics say,
I could not possibly be as bad as they make out. How monotonous
the attack becomes! If it is a "Consummatum Est," then it is as if
one said "Bo!" in a thunderstorm. If it is an Adam, then instead of
a Whitmanic epic it is as if one had written a sonnet. Always a
belittling, a whittling down to the trivial, to the impertinent. If
the statue is in marble then a "beautiful block of marble" is ruined;
a large bronze, the wasted labor is deplored. I remember how
astonished I was to read after one of these criticisms of the
"Genesis" by the same critic, praise of a most clumsy and obscene
piece of sculpture by a painter of his clique. It was described as
"this beautiful bronze." I then realized that the dailies and weeklies
were almost completely dominated by these types of prejudiced
critics, determined at all costs to boost themselves and theirs only.
348 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
Their distortions are often so ludicrous as not to be worth answer
ing, as when in comparing the treatment of the hair in busts and
heads it was pointed out that a certain French sculptor's treatment
was in all cases sensitive and mine coarse; the truth being that that
particular sculptor was invariably insensitive. In any case, why
the inevitable comparison with me; why not compare the work of
their French and English sculptors with the past, Egypt, Donatello,
Verrocchio? That is where they should look for comparisons.
Also in the same vein, is the critic in the New English Weekly
whose gospel of "prevention is better than cure" gives the show
away for these really sterile minds. Contraceptives may be all very
well for those who can "conceive," but in the case of our highbrow
critics I do not think the necessity exists.
APPENDIX X
"Adam"
The following article by William McCance appeared, June 24,
1939, in the London Picture Post:
EPSTEIN'S ADAM
MORE THAN THE USUAL STORM HAS GREETED EPSTEIN'S MASSIVE
SCULPTURE OF THE FIRST MAN OF ALL.
Epstein's name is better known to the man-in-the-street than that of
any other British sculptor. Yet you will rarely find examples of his
carving on public buildings, whilst the works of other sculptors, with
less technical ability, and with not a tenth of his artistic power, appear
regularly on our new buildings and at international exhibitions as
representing the best in British sculpture.
Why are Epstein's larger carvings so spumed and neglected by
officialdom? It cannot be that he is unknown. Nor can it be that his
work is not appreciated, for he has been commissioned to do in bronze
the heads of more celebrities than any sculptor in Britain. Conrad,
Einstein, the Emperor of Abyssinia, Ramsay MacDonald, J. B. Priestley
—are only a few of them.
Are his carvings, then, not suitable for public buildings? You would
think that the architects of the buildings would be the best judges of
that. And yet there are buildings in London, where there are blocks
of bare stone, left uncarved, because the architects have refused to
allow anyone but Epstein to touch them, whilst the responsible bodies
of laymen have refused to have his work* This is a sad state of affairs.
The reason, however, is simple. Like many significant works of art in
the past, Epstein's sculpture is so powerful and stimulating that it is
349
350 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
bound to lead to violent reactions. Before his work can be appre
ciated or understood, the mind of the spectator must be clean and free
from prejudice. It is so easy to hate something we do not understand.
It is so easy to abuse something we are afraid of. But when a thing is so
powerful that we are even afraid of trying to understand it, our only
hope is to persecute it out of existence.
It is not true to say, as some people are so apt to say, that Epstein
is purposely seeking this form of publicity. After all he sculpts not
only because he cannot help himself, but, like the carpenter and the
plumber, to earn his bread and butter. It is typical of Epstein's deep
sense of duty and service to the community that, when I remarked
to him the other day that more of his work should be acquired for
the general public, after he has put so much work and concentration
into it, he replied, "It's not the work; it's the time." For he feels he
has still so much to give to the world, if only the loud-mouthed section
of the public would give up their attacks on him, and allow his work
to appear on those buildings which are already awaiting his chisel to
complete them.
Epstein is now 59 years of age, and has spent most of his life in New
York and London. For something like forty years he has devoted
himself to sculpture. He has no hard and fast rules of work. When
he is on the job, he knows what he wants to do, and works hard on
it. But he has no fixed hours. Yet his output in sheer physical labour
is terrific. He does not know what it is to compromise* And, unlike
the advanced artist, whose friends say that he has now become an
R.A. and died happily ever after, Epstein has no such ambition.
In conception and in size, the "Adam/* carved in alabaster, is the
most important work in his exhibition, which is now being held at
the Leicester Galleries* To understand this work, and to feel its tre
mendous power, it is essential to stand before it, and let it sink in. All
that the critic can do is to offer a few hints about the grammar that
Epstein has used to express his sculptural conception.
A little knowledge of this grammar may make it more easy to master
the prejudices which will arise in a number of people's minds.
Every original conception in art must create also its own unique
technique. It is only die third-rate artist who goes to his work with a
preconceived formula, asserts it on his subject, and consistently re
peats what his patrons have learnt to expect of Mm.
"ADAM" 35i
To understand this "Adam," too, one must know the meaning of
the words naturalism and realism as used in relation to art. Naturalism
in sculpture is a slick kind of reporting of the shapes and forms into
stone. Each form and shape will be practically similar to that of the
subject, although little differences will be introduced here and there
for the sake of emphasis. In other words, the naturalistic sculptor will
report his subject like a good reporter. Any trained sculptor can do
this, but if he knows his job he will not call it art. He knows that it
is merely acting as a sort of recording camera. Naturalism in sculpture
is a recording in stone of shapes and forms observed by the artist.
Realism in sculpture, on the other hand, is closely bound up with
realisation. First, there is the conception of the idea. The idea must be
conceived in terms of the particular medium. If it is to be carried
out in wood, its forms and volumes must be seen in the artist's mind
as forms and volumes natural to wood; if clay, then the particular
nature of clay, and if stone, the nature of the stone must not be
violated. That is the first essential, but it is not the whole story.
Then comes the realisation of the conception in its particular medium.
The wood or stone now has to be carved in such a way that none of
its own nature is sacrificed. The finished work must look as if it grew,
almost of its own accord, out of the wood or stone. But, even if this
is realised quite adequately, it still does not mean that a work of art,
as distinct from a piece of craftsmanship, has been produced. It may
be just a dead bit of stone or wood, with a few interesting forms
thrown in, yet still inert.
It only becomes a work of art when it lives in its own right; when
the artist, by some, almost magical power, imbues it with life. It must
have such a perfect sense of unity that, if one form is altered, every
other must be changed in order to capture the new unity.
This "Adam" is a great work of art, because it has all of these
properties. It is conceived in stone, its nature has not been violated by
the chisel, and the forms and volumes are so magically related, one
to the other, that there is an upward surge and flow which brings it
to Hf e— a kind of pulsating stone.
The forms are stone forms. They have a kind of everlasting life.
They will not go the way of all flesh. It is partly this feeling of per
manence, combined with this surging sculptural movement, which
352 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
makes the "Adam" so powerful. And yet there is no suggestion of
violent naturalistic movement. Any movement there is, is suggested
purely by this genus of related volumes and forms, rather than by
arms flung out in action. The movement takes place in the very stone
itself, and not in space. Epstein does not distort forms for the sake
of some abstract principle of design. He recreates the forms to bring
them to life.
He has too great a respect for his block of stone to distort it in
order to make it look like flesh. He has that kind of humility which
respects innate differences of nature; an artist, not a dictator.
I wonder if it was the overwhelming power of the "Adam" which
accounted for the following incident when I was at the gallery the
other day.
A charming old lady came forward into the room, and, with a super
cilious air, raised her lorgnette to look at the sculpture. In another
moment the lorgnette seemed to be swept clean out of her hand and
with it went all the haughtiness and supercilious gesture. She hurried
away. I thought she looked too charming to blame Epstein or abuse
him, but there is no doubt that she had been deeply horrified.
Should any of the readers of this article have this kind of mishap,
it might be better for them to pick up their spectacles, think about
some of the points I have brought forward and have yet another look,
remembering, at the same time, that a man who has given forty years
of his life to the intensive study of a subject, as Epstein has done,
probably knows a great deal about it; as much, at least, as the plumber
who has served his apprenticeship does in his particular craft
It is surprising the amount of respect we have for the plumber when
he is on his job, and yet every Tom, Dick, or Harry accepts it as his
right to tell the artist how he should or should not do his job,
If the "Adam" still overwhelms you, go and see it again and again.
It is worth it But, in the meantime, mm to the bronze heads and the
drawings in the exhibition. With complete mastery of his craft Epstein
models his heads so that the full play of light will bring out the
metallic quality of the bronze* You will then see how cleverly he
adapts himself to each new medium.
He has been criticised for painting the lips and eyebrows of Tiyi,
one of his esdubited works. I asked him about this, and he pointed
"ADAM" 353
out that there is nothing very original or revolutionary in painting
parts of sculpture.
The Greeks always painted their marbles, and the Italian sculptors
did so too, until just before the time of Donatello But this is typical
of the petty criticism which surrounds the name of Epstein.
WILLIAM MCCANCE
APPENDIX XI
Catalogue of the Chief Works of
Jacob Epstein
19074939
1907
Carvings
Commenced Strand Statues
In 'Bronze
"RQMILLY"
(Baby head)
ITALIAN PEASANT WOMAN
MAKIE RANKIN
(First version of the Irish Girl)
HEAD OF AN INFANT
Purchased by EL M. Queen Alexandra*
1908
Carvings
Carvings on the British Medical Association's Buildings, Strand,
MATORN1TY
354
CATALOGUE 355
1909
In Bronze
NAN
(Bust with earrings and drapery round shoulders)
At the National Gallery of British Art
(Tate Gallery)
(An undraped version is in the Eumorfopoulos collection)
GERTRUDE
(Head and beginning of shoulders)
AN ENGLISH GIRL
(Head and shoulders)
Exhibited Leicester Galleries, 1924
1910
Carvings
EUPHEMIA
(Marble)
Owned by A. B. Clifton
SUNFLOWER
(Stone)
MRS. CHADBXJRNE
(Alabaster bust)
In Bronze
LADY GREGORY
(Bust)
At the National Gallery, Dublin
MRS. AMBROSE MCEVOY
(Bust to shoulders with medalHon round the neck)
356 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
1911
In Bronze
THE DREAMER
(Small recumbent figure)
SEATED NUDE
(Small)
IRISH GIRL
(Head)
MRS, CLIFTON
(Bust)
MRS. FRANCIS DODD
(Head)
Owned by Francis Dodd
EUPHEMIA LAMB
(Full bust)
Eumorfopoulos collection
NAN
(Head and neck. Hair parted centre and drawn away from ears,
eyes closed)
In Plaster
£U*H£MU
(Life-sized draped figure)
1912
Cawings
THE OSCAR WILDE MEMORIAL
(Commenced in 1909. In Hopton Wood stone)
At P&re Lachaise Cemetery, Paris
CATALOGUE 357
In Bronze
MRS. EPSTEIN
(Bust, leaning on one arm)
Carvings
TWO DOVES
(In marble)
Owned by John Alf ord, Esq.
ONE CARVING IN FLENITE
Collection of the late John Quinn
TWO CARVINGS IN FLENITE
Collection of the late T. E. Hulme
MOTHER AND CHILD
(In marble. The form of two heads, i6l/2 inches high)
Collection of the late John Quinn
(His collection was dispersed at his death. This Mother and Child was
recently presented by A. Conger Goodyear, to the Museum of
Modern Art, of which he is president.)
In Bronze
THE ROCK DRILL
CURSED BE THE DAY WHEREIN I WAS BORN
(In plaster, with coloring)
Collection of the late John Quinn
1914
Carvings
SECOND GROUP OF BIRDS
(Marble)
Owned by Mrs, Steyn
358 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
1915
Carvings
THIRD GROUP OF BIRDS
(Marble: 29 x 26 inches)
Collection of the late John Quinn
(Illustrated in Catalogue.)
In Bronze
BUST OF LORD FISHER
Imperial War Museum
HER GRACE THE DUCHESS OF HAMILTON
(Full bust to waist: arms to elbow)
THE COUNTESS OF DROGHEDA
(Full bust)
Collection of the late John Quinn
(THE ;LATE) M\ T. E. HULMB
(Head)
Collection of the late John Quinn
IRIS TREE
(Head and neck)
Collection of the late John Quinn
MRS, HAMBLAY
(Head and coiled hair)
MARIE BEERBOHM
(Head and neck)
1916
In Bronze
MRS. JACOB EPSTEIN
(Mask with long ear-rings)
Collection of the late John Quian
CATALOGUE 359
FIRST BUST OF MEUM
Manchester Art Gallery
THE TIN HAT
Imperial War Museum
W. H. DAVIES
(Head)
Owned by the Hon. Evan Morgan
BERNARD VAN DIEREN
(Head and neck, with collar)
Collection of the late John Quinn
AUGUSTUS JOHN
(Head and neck)
Collection of the Viscountess Tredegar
MUIRHEAD BONE
(Head)
At the Art Gallery, Dundee
1917
Carvings
MOTHER AND CHILD
(Granite)
(Subsequently lost.)
VENUS
(Marble commenced in 1914. Height 8 feet)
Exhibited Leicester Galleries, 1920
Collection of the late John Quinn
In Bronze
SMALL HEAD OF MEUM
(Showing the ears)
Collection of the late John Quinn
360 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
AN AMERICAN SOLDIER
(Head and neck, with open collar)
Exhibited Leicester Galleries, 1920
The Metropolitan Museum, N. Y.
MISS MARGARET NIELKA
(Full bust)
(In her possession.)
MISS BORIS KEANE
(Head and small portion of neck)
(In her possession*)
MRS. ANDREWS
(Head)
(In her possession.)
CLARE SHERIDAN
(Bust)
(In her possession,)
SIR FRANCIS NEWBOLT, K.C.
HER GRACE THE DtJCHESS OF MARYBOROUGH
(Bust with necklace)
ELIZABETH
Daughter of Lady Howard de Waldcn
(Baby head with naff)
JOSEPH HOLBROOICB
(Head, neckf aad collar)
In Plaster
(No bronzes have yet been cast from these works*)
LARGE SELF-PORTRAIT
(Head in storm cap)
HAELAT MATTHEWS
(Head)
CATALOGUE 361
1918
In Bronze
MRS. JACOB EPSTEIN
(Bust, with draped head and shoulders)
Exhibited Leicester Galleries, 1920
MASK OF MEUM
Exhibited Leicester Galleries, 1920
Art Institute, Chicago
MARCHESA CASATI
(Mask)
MEUM WITH FAN
(Three-quarter-length figure, with arms and hands.
Commenced in 1916.)
Exhibited at the Leicester Galleries, 1920
Owned by Mrs. Alfred Sutro
In Plaster
(No bronzes have been cast from this)
PEGGY- JEAN AT THREE MONTHS
(Head)
In Bronze
THE CHRIST
(Begun in 1917. Exhibited Leicester Galleries. 1920.)
Owned by A. Cherry-Garrard, Lamer Park, Wheathamstead
SERGT. DAVID FERGUSON HUNTER, V. C.
(Full bust, open shirt, arms crossed)
Imperial War Museum
362 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
(Full bust. Arms to elbow. Hands detached)
Exhibited at the Leicester Galleries, 1920
NORBBN
(Head)
PEGGY- JEAN SMILING
(Head at fourteen months)
In Plaster
(No bronze casts have been taken from these works.)
MRS. EPSTEIN WITH BAND ON HAIR
HEAD OF PEGGY- JEAN AT ONE YEAR
IQ2O
In Bronze
SELF-PORTRAIT
(Bearded head)
Exhibited at the Leicester Galleries, 1916
3PEGGY-JEA3ST ASLEEP
(At 18 months, Head, Shoulders, and clasped hands)
Exhibited at the Leicester Galleries, 1924
Owned by Hugh Walpole, Esq.
LILLIAN SHELLEY
(Bust to waist. Hands holding drapery)
Exhibited at the Leicester Galleries, 19:10
Lent by W, Burrell to the Tata Gallery
BETTY MAY
(Full busty with arms crossed)
Esdhdbited g± the Leicester Galleries, 1920
CATALOGUE 363
MARCELLE
(Head)
The Coleman collection
MLLE. GABRIELLE SOENE
(Full bust. Drapery over shoulder, fastened over in center)
Exhibited at the Leicester Gallaries, 1920
In Plaster
CECIL GRAY
(Bust)
1921
In Bronze
GIRL FROM SENEGAL
(Full bust)
Exhibited at the Leicester Galleries, 1924
Owned by R. Pulitzer
KATHLEEN
(Bust)
Exhibited at the Leicester Galleries, 1924
Lent to the National Gallery of British Art by the
Contemporary Art Society
JACOB KRAMER
(Bust)
Purchased in 1924 for the National Gallery of British Art
by the Contemporary Art Society
MIRIAM PLICHTE
(Head)
MIRIAM PLICHTE
(Full bust)
BETTY MAY
(Head)
364 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
HEAD OF PEGGY- JEAN AT TWO YEARS
HEAD OF PEGGY- JEAN AT TWO YEARS
(The two together called "Putti")
Exhibited at the Leicester Galleries, 1931
PEGGY- JEAN
(Bust, with arms out. Two years old)
PEGGY- JEAN
(Bust, with very curly hair, 2 years 4 months)
PEGGY- JEAN LAUGHING
(Bust, 2 years 9 months)
Exhibited at the Leicester Galleries, 1924
PEGGY- JEAN SAD
(Bust, 2 years 9 months)
Exhibited at the Leicester Galleries, 1924
THE WEEPING WOMAN
(Figure to waist, with clasped hands)
Leicester Galleries, 1924
At the City of Leicester Art Galleries
SBLINA
(Full bust. Arms to elbow)
Leicester Gallarics, 1924
The Brooklyn Museum
(Head)
LA BOHPfeMXBNNB
(Head and neck only. Cast from bust which is the
study of Dolores)
Leicester Galleries, 1931
The Art Gallery,
CATALOGUE 365
FEDORA ROSELLI
(Large bust. Hair parted center and braided over ears)
Leicester Galleries, 1924
OLD SMITH
(Head)
1923
Carvings
TWO ARMS
(Marble. Hands clasped)
Leicester Galleries, 1924
In Bronze
R, B. CUNNINGHAME-GRAHAM
(Head)
Leicester Galleries, 1924
The RBtherston collection
Study for Portrait of
HIS GRACE THE DXJKE OF MARLBOROUGH
(Head and neck, with collar)
Leicester Galleries, 1924
Study for Portrait of
HER GRACE THE DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH
(Head)
EILEEN
(Head and shoulders)
DOLORES
(Head resting upon chin and hair)
Leicester Galleries, 1924
366 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
FEROSA RASTOUMJI
(Head and neck)
Leicester Galleries, 1924
OLD PINAGER
(Head and hands)
Leicester Galleries, 1924
At the Art Gallery, Aberdeen
DOLORES
(Full bust, with hands* Star-shaped ear-rings)
Leicester Galleries, 1924
RECLINING NUDE
(Dolores. Cut off below knees. Right hand over breast.
Left hand at back of head)
Leicester Galleries, 1924
DR. ADOLPH S. OICO
Leicester Galleries, 1924
Owned by Mrs. Chester Beatty
In Bronze
JOSEPH CONRAD
(Full bust in coat and collar)
Owned by Mulrhead Bone
ELSA MANCHESTER
(Head)
Leicester Galleries, 1924
EVE DERVICH
(Head and shoulders)
Leicester Galleries, 1914
CATALOGUE 367
THE SERAPH
(Head resting on chin)
Leicester Galleries, 1926
SHEILA
(Head)
Leicester Galleries, 1924
JACOB EPSTEIN (of Baltimore)
Baltimore Institute of Art
DAVID ERSKINE
(Bust)
Linlathen Library, N. B.
1925
Carvings
RIMA
(In Portland stone)
The Bird Sanctuary, Hyde Park.
Memorial to W. H. Hudson.
In Bronze
HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF MARX-BOROUGH
(Half-length in robes at Blenheim)
ENVER
(The first head)
Leicester Galleries, 1926
SUNITA
(The first head, with small piece of neck)
Leicester Galleries, 1926
SUNtTA
(Bust)
Leicester Galleries, 1926
368 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
SYBIL THORNDIKE
(Bust)
PROFESSOR S. ALEXANDER, O.M.
(Head and shoulders)
Leicester Galleries, 1926
ORIEL
(First bust. Looking out)
1926
In Bronze
THE VISITATION
(A Study)
Exhibited at the Leicester Galleries, 1926, and as aA Study"
presented by the
National Art Collection Fund to the National Gallery of
British Art.
SUNITA
(Bust, with arms and necklace)
Leicester Galleries, 1926
RABINDRANATH TAGORE
(Head resting on beard)
RT. HON. J. RAMSAY MACBONAL0, KC»
(Bust)
Glasgow Art Gallery
Edinburgh Art Gallery
HON. STEPHEN TENNANT
(Bust with arms)
a p. SCOTT
Leicester Galleries, 1926
The Manchester Art Gallery
CATALOGUE 369
MLLE. MIJINSKA
(Bust, hair parted center, and chignon)
EDWARD GOOD ("MOYSHEH OYVED")
(Head)
Leicester Galleries, 1926
PEGGY-JEAN
(Bust, with long hair. 7^2 years)
ORIEL
(Bust, looking down)
JAMES KEARNS FEIBLEMAN
(Head and neck)
MIRIAM: PATEL
(Large bust)
1927
In Bronze
THE MADONNA AND CHILD
Exhibited at the FerargH Galleries, New York,
1927, and Knoedler Galleries, London, 1929
ENVER
(Head and neck, the scond)
PEARL OKO
(Head and neck)
Owned by A. S. Oko
• DAISY DXJNN
(Full bust, hair cut short)
(Second version, also cast with long hair)
370 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
VIRGINIA
(Head resting on chin and neck)
Owned by Arnold L. Haskell
PROFESSOR JOHN BEWEY
(Bust)
At Columbia University
PROFESSOR FRANZ BOAS
(Bust)
ZEDA
(Head only cast from bust)
Leicester Galleries, 1931
1928
In Bronze
RT* HON. THE VISCOUNT ROTHERMERE, P.O.
(Full bust)
Leicester Galleries, 1931
THE SICK CHILD
(P<5ggy~Jeanf aged 10)
(Head and shoulders, long hair and extended arm)
Owned by Arnold L. Haskell
A PORTRAIT (MRS* GODFREY PHILLIPS)
(Head and shoulders)
National Gallery of British Art
PAUL ROBBSON
(Head)
Made in New York
CATALOGUE 371
1929
Carvings
DAY and NIGHT
(In Portland stone)
The New Underground Headquarters Building, St. James's
In Bronze
BETTY JOEL
(Head)
(Afterwards extended into bust: LA BELLE JUIVE)
MRS. GERRARD
(Full Bust)
MR. DAVID COHN
(Head)
1930
In Bronze
LA BELLE JUIVE
(Bust of Betty Joel, earrings and medallion)
Leicester Galleries, 1931
JSRAFEL
(Head and shoulders)
Leicester Galleries, 1931
HANS KINDLER
(Head)
Leicester Galleries, 1931
ISOBEL POWYS
(Full bust, with draped scarf over shoulder)
Leicester Galleries, 1931
372 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
REBECCA
(Bust. Two long plaits of hair)
Leicester Galleries, 1931
MAY GOLDIE
(Bust)
Leicester Galleries, 1931
LYDIA
(Full bust)
Exhibited Leicester Galleries, 1931
ESTHER
(Bust)
In Plaster
MARY BLANDFORD
(Head and neck, hair in two coils, eyes looking down)
Carvings
GENESIS
(Serravezza marble, over-life-size, commenced 1929)
Exhibited Leicester Galleries, 1931
In the possession of Alfred Charles Bossom, M*P.
THE SUN 000 and GODS
(Hopton Wood stone)
Commenced in 1910. Resumed in 1931
Exhibited Leicester Galleries, 1933
In Bronze
JOAN GREENWOOD
(Child head, curly hair)
Leicester Galleries, 1931
Owned by Lord Derby
CATALOGUE 373
KATHLEEN
(Bust, draped)
RECLINING GODDESS
(Small nude figure on back, resting on elbows,
cut off below knee)
ELLEN JANSEN
(Head)
MR. M. BENDON
(Head)
LYDIA
(The second: bust with shingled hair)
ORIEL ROSS
(The third: full bust, with both arms)
MRS. HEATH
(Full bust)
DR. CRAMER
(Head and neck)
ISRAFEL
(Bust)
MARY
(Head)
MRS. CRAMER
(Bust)
PHYLLIS
(Head)
TEEAINIA
(Bust)
374 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
ESTHER
(Bust)
REBECCA
(Bust)
*932*
In Bronze
HARRIET HOCTER
(Bust)
JOHN GIELGU0
(Bust)
A. V. NICOLLE
(Bust)
EMLYN WILLIAMS
(Bust)
SAH OVE0
(Bust)
AHMED
(Bust)
ULA JEXJNESSEn
(Bust)
KATHLEEN
(Bust, smiling)
BASIL BURTON
(Bust with arms)
ROMA
(Head)
CATALOGUE 375
ISABEL
(Head)
ISABEL
(Bust)
(Lady with shawl, long curled ringlet earrings with
arms and hands holding shawl)
GERTRUDE
(Half length)
(Plaster made in 1910, but not cast in bronze until 1932)
PROFESSOR LUCY MARTIN DONELLY
(Draped bust)
Bryn Mawr College
1933
In bronze
ROSE
PROFESSOR ALBERT EINSTEIN
(Head)
ROMA
(Second portrait, bust)
A. C. J, WALL
(Bust)
HIRAM HALLE
(Head)
SIR HUGH WALPOLE
(Head)
376 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
LORD BEAVERBROOK
(Head)
LYDTA LAUGHING
(Third portrait, head)
M. S. MEYERS
(Bust)
DR, CHAIM WEIZMANN
(Bust)
MICHAEL BALKIN
(Bust)
MAN OF ARAN
(Head)
Water-colors
50 Paintings of Epping Forest. Exhibited at Messrs. Arthur Tooth
and Sons, 155 New Bond Street, W, I., in December, 1933.
*934
In Bronze
ISABEL
(First portrait, bust)
Bust modeled in 1932, Head cast in 1932*
Complete cast made in 1934.
RT. HON. J. RAMSAY MCDONALD, P.C
(Second portrait, bust)
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
(Bust)
*935
Camnngs
"BEHOLD THE MAN"
(Carving in Subiaco stone)
Twice life-size, 1 1 tons in weight.
CATALOGUE 377
In Bronze
BERNARD VAN DIEREN
(Second portrait, bust)
SIR ALEX MARTIN
(Bust, arm across chest)
W. H. COLLINS
(Bust)
Presented to the Middlesex Hospital, where it remains in the X-ray
Department, which Mr. Collins presented to the Hospital
NIANDA
(Head)
ETHEL LITTMAN
(Bust)
DEBORAH
(Head)
JACKIE
(First portrait, bust, at one year of age)
JACKIE
(Second portrait, small bust, at one year of age)
PEGGY-JEAN
(Eleventh portrait, bust with knotted ribbon on her hair)
SIR FRANK FLETCHER
of Charterhouse School
(Large bust)
Presented to the Charterhouse School
MRS. OKO
(Head)
378 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
ELSA
(Head)
TIYI
(Head)
MORNA
(Bust)
1936
In Bronze
EDWARD GOLDSTONE
(Small bust)
KATHLEEN
(Bust)
(Large half-length -with arms)
ROBERT MAYER
(Bust)
J* B* I>RIE8TI.EY
(Bust, with arms)
HAILE SELASSIE I* NK«U8 NKGUSTI
Emperor of Ethiopia
Lion of Judah
ROSEMARY CARVER
(Bust)
LEONE
(Head)
NKEENSKA
(Head)
CATALOGUE 379
TANYA
(Bust)
Water-colors
100 Flower Paintings. Exhibited at Messrs. Arthur Tooth and Sons,
155 New Bond Street, W. I December, 1939
1937
Carvings
"CONSUMMATUM EST"
(Carving in alabaster)
Over-life-size
Exhibited at the Leicester Galleries, October 1937.
In Bronze
RITA
(Head)
DAVID MORRIS
(Bust)
SIR ALEXANDER WALKER
(Head)
PQLA
(Bust)
BERENICE
(Bust)
NORMAN HORNSTEIN
(Bust)
380 LET THERE BE SCULPTURE
1938
In Bronze
SALLY RYAN
(Bust)
ELLEN BALLON
(Large bust with arms)
MADAME ERNEST ASCHER
(Head)
ROBERT FLAHERTY
(Head)
JACKIE
(Fifth portrait, head at four years of age)
Drawings
"tES FLEVRS nir MAL" (60 Drawings)
Exhibited at Messrs. Arthur Tooth and Sons, 155 New Bond Street,
W. I, December, 1938. Commissioned by the Limited Editions Club
of New York, for an Edition Deluxe of Charles Baudelaire's Les Pleurs
du MaL
1939
Carvings
ADAM
(In alabaster)
Exhibited Leicester Galleries, 1939
In Bronze
RABBI STEPHEN S* WISE
(Head)
Exhibited at the World's Fairf New York, 1939.
Now in possession of Rabbi Stephen S. Wise
Index
Aberdeen Art Gallery, 88, 366
—University, 202
Abu Simbal, 242
Abyssinia, 74
Academie Goncourt, 265
Adam, 50, 150-6, 212, 349-53, 380
Adam, Paul, 257, 266
Adams, H. Percy, 221
Adlcr, Jacob, 10
African carvings, 161-4
Ahmed, 374
Ainslie, Douglas, 53
Ajax, 234
Akhenaton, 166
Alasseur, 257
Aicaid tie Henares, 134
Aldington, Richard, 38, 53
Alexander, Prof. $., Q.M., 368
Alexandra, 257
Alford, John, 357
Allom, Sir Charles, v, 14°
American Soldier, 360
Andrew, Mrs., 360
Angclico, Fra, 279
Anita, 109
Aquitmia^ 70
Archipcnko, 267
Architect, 237
Architecture Club, 291
Arnyvelde, Andr6, 267
Arp, Hans, an
Art Institute, Chicago, 361
Art Students' League, N. YM 4, 1
Ascher, Mm$. Ernest, 380
Athenaeum, 271
A Trovers Le Sudan, 82
Aubonel, 257
Babe, A, 158
Bach, 86, 104, 137, 139, 193
Baker, Sir Herbert, 30, 250
Bakst, Leon, 46
Bakunin, Mikhail, 21
Baldwin, Stanley, 106
Balfour, Lady Frances, 107
Balkin, Michael, 376
Ballad of Reading Gaol, The, 270
Ballon, Ellen, 380
Baltimore Institute of Art, 367
Balzac, 268, 283
Balzac, (Rodin's), 282, 300
Barlach, 208
Barnard, George Grey, 13, 89, 97, 101,
1 1 6, 205-7
Barnes, Dr. Albert, m
Barres, Maurice, 265
Bates, Henry, 242
Battersea, Lord, 280
Baudelaire, Charles, 52, 142-9, 195, 257-8,
266, 380
Bazile, Georges, 265-6
Beardsley, Aubrey, 344
Beatty, Mrs. Chester, 366
Beaux Arts, Ecole des, 18, 21, 93, 126
Beaverbrook, Lord, 71-2, (head) 325,
376
, 207 Bechet, A,, 83
-Madeleine, 82
INDEX
Beckwith, James Carroll, n
'Becrbohm^ Aiaric^ 358
Beethoven, 104, 188, 190, 193
Behold the Man, 35, 50, 135-6, 320-9,
337. 376
Bcldcn, Rev, Albert, v, 338
Bclisario, 267
Belle Jmvc, La, 371
Belloc, Hilaire, 108
Bendon, M., 373
Bennett, Arnold, 299
Benton, Tom, 117
Berengcr, 269
Berenice, 139, (bust) 379
Bergson, 53
Bernini, 295
Bevan, Robert, 54, 201
Binyon, Laurence, v, 27, 226, 228, 299
Bird, The, (Brancusi's) , 123-5
Bird Plnnung Itself, A, 50
Bird Sanctuary, see Hudson Memorial
Birds, (second group) 357, (tbird
group), 358
Birkenhead, Lord, 76
Birmwfthffm Mail, v, 147, 153
Blake, 276, 328-9
Blwidford, M$ry, 372
Blenheim Palace, 85-7
Biomfield, Sir Reginald, v, 130, 303
Blunt, Antony, v, 319
Boa%, Franz, 122-3, (bust) 370
Boboli Gardens, 250
Boehmc, Sir Joseph Edgar, 312
Bohthtiiewne, La, (head and neck, cast
from first Dolores) 364
Boilcau, 257
Boldoni, 87
"Bold Sculpture," 26, 219
Bomberg, 102
Bone, James, v, 29-30, 115, 247, 300, 303
Bone, Sir Muirheail, v, 23, 31, 62, 6ys
105-8, 129, 231, 235, 241, 249-52, 288,
297-8, 305, %66, (head) 359
Bordais, 257
Borden, Mary, v, 326
Bossom, Alfred Charles, 372
Boston Museum, 175
Bouguercau, 281
Bourdolle, 205
Bouts, Dierick, 281
Bouvard, 257
Boy With a Coney, 51
Rradshaw, H. C., 251
Brancusi, Constantin, 38, 40-1, 123-6,
164, 203, 207-8
"Brandy Bill," 28
Briggs, Alias Jessie, 1 1 1
British Academy, 297
British Medical Association, 26, 30, 128,
217-18, 238, 244-53
British Medical Journal, v, 229, 231,
233-4, 236-8, 246
British Museum, 152, 167-75, 200, 242
Rrodie, Steve, 6
Brook Kerith, The, 282
Brooklyn Museum of Art, 124, 364
Brothers Karaffiazov, The, 8, 77
Brown, Oliver Madox, 243
Bruges, 281
H rummer Head, 162
Bryn Mawr College, 375
Brzcska, Sophie, 36-8
Building IVt'wjr, 237
Bunyatfs Pilgrim's Progress, 143
Buonarroti, it»e Michelangelo
Burghclerc, 243
Rurnc-Jones, Sir Philip, 108, 281, 298
Burrcll, Sir William, 99, 362
Burton, Basil, 374
Busont, 103-4
Byron, Lord, 81, 130
Cafe decorations, 99
C/ahan, Abrahmtt, n
Ckin, Georges, 157
Gamdcft Town Group, 535
Cameron, Sir D, Yn 199
Capoul, Victor, a 80
Camera, Prittto, 546
Carver, Roswt&ry, 378
"Carvings in Flcnitc,w 272
Gasati, Marchesat 77, (mask) 361
Catholic Tmtcs, v, 136
Cavell Monument, 193
Cayley-Robimon, 104
Ce crops and His Daughter, 174
Cellini, Benvenuto, 122
Century Company, n
Cezanne, 94, 120-1, 194, 200, 335
Chadburne, Mrs,, 355
Chanler, Bob, 120
Chantry Bequest, 69
Chants de Maldoror, Le, 40
Chapel of the Holy Sacrament, St.
Pierre, 261
Chartered Accountants7 Hall, 242
Charterhouse School, 377
Charteris, Evan, 299
Charcres Cathedral, 242
Chemical Research, 232
Ch£rioux, 257
Cherry-Garrard, A. Apsley, 92, 361
Chesterton, G. 1C, 326
Chicago Art Institute, 361
Children, 157-9
Chioshead, 175
Christ (the first statue), 92-8, 136,
140-1, 278-87, (in bronze) 361
Christ in the House of His Parents,
224
Cimabue, 278, 281
Civic Virtue , 117
Cladel, (massier), 20
—Andrew, 237
—Sir Kenneth, v, 240
Cleopatra's Needle, 236
Clifford, Dr., 236
Clifton, A. B,, 355
-Mrs., 356
Coate, W, HL, v
CockeroU, Sir Sidney, 62
Cohn, David, 371
Colcman Collection, 363
Coleridge, Stephen, 108
Collier, John, 108
Collins, W. H., 377
Columbia University, 122, 370
Colvin, Sidney, 231, 233
Come Unto Me, 333
Comh£ d'Esth6tique de la Prefecture
de la Seine, 256, 260, 262, 265
Commune, 12
Comoedia, 2^5, 267
INDEX 383
Conrad, Joseph, 62-7, 80, 349, (full bust)
366
—Mrs., 67
Constable, W. G., 240-1
Consummatum Est, 93, 135, 137-41, 212,
331, 348, 379
Contemporary Art Society, 363
Conway, Martin, 27, 231, 233
Coote, W. A., 218, 236
Country Life, 292
Courbet, 12, 134
Courtald, S. L., 299
Cramer, Dr., 373
-Mrs., 373
Crane, Stephen, 199
—Walter, 219
Crawford and Balcarres, Earl of, 240-1
Creation, 274
Croce, 53
Crookshank, Captain, 169 (note)
Crowninshield, Frank, 119, 123-4
Cunninghame-Graham, R, B., 79, 105-6,
179, 288, 290, 299, (head) 365
Curie, Richard, 53, 62, 67
Cursed Be the Day Wherein I Was
Born, 357
Daily Express, v, 72, 169, 308
Daily Mail, v, 44, 106, 144, 308
Daily Mirror, 140, 320, 325-6
Daily News, 237
Daily Telegraph, v, 30-1, no, 206, 238,
240, 248, 251-2, 310, 324, 326
d'Andign6, 257
d'Ant6ros, 270
Daumier, 131, 134
Dausset, 257
Dave, Victor, 21
David, 294
David, Gerard, 281
Davies, W. H., 359
da Vinci, Leonardo, 60, 148, 286
Davison, Sir Williamson, 108
Day and Night, 93, 128-30, 145, 155,
202, 300-7, 310, 313-4, 320, 337-8, 371
Dayot, Armand, 258
Dead Christ, 347
Deborah, 377
INDEX
Debs, Eugene V., 12
Defer, 257
Degas, 86, 199, 208, 335
d'Hostel, Banville, 264, 267
Delanney, 256, 260-1
Dellanoy, 257, 266
Delius, Frederick, 103
—Mrs., 103
Demctcr of Cnidw, 167, 170
Dcrain, 336
Dervich, Eve, (head and shoulders)
366
Descaves, Lucien, 257, 263, 266
Desiderio da Settignano, 157
Despiau, 147, 203
Dewey, John, 119, 121-3, (bust) 370
Dick, W. Reid, 240-1
Dickens, Charles, 294, 297
Dicksee, Sir Frank, 106, 108
Dieren, Bernard van, 69, 94-7, 103, 247-
8, (head with neck and collar) 359,
(second portrait bust) 377
Disciples of Emmaus, 95
Dobson, Frank, 317
Dodd, Francis, 13-4, 78, 299, 356
—Mrs*, 356
Dolores, 81-2, 99-100, (head resting on
chin and hair) 365, (full bust, with
hands, star-shaped ear-rings) 366, (re
clining nude) 366
Donatello, 14, 100, 157, 207, 213, 319,
348, 353
Density, Prof. Lucy Martin, 375
Doris Keanc, Miss, 360
Douglas, Lord Alfred, 265
Downey, Archbishop, no
Doyle, Sir Arthur Co nan, 108
Dreamer, Tb@$ 356
Drogheda, Cmntm of, 358
Dublin Art Gallery, 33
Ducantel, 267
Dukes, Ashley, 53, 56
Dumont, 257
Duncan, Isadora, 20
Dwm, Daisy, 369
Dundee Art Gallery, 359
Duran, Carolu$, 33 j
Purer, 101
Duveen, Lord, 89, 115, 161
Duvccn Gallery, 212
Eakins, Thomas, 8, 14
Earp, T. W., v, 251-2, 326
Easter Island, 35, 272
Ecce Homo, 135
Edinburgh Art Gallery, 368
Egoist, v, 50
Eileen, (head and shoulders) 365
Einstein, Albert, 67-9, 181, 349, (head)
375
Elgin Marbles, 168, 175
Elizabeth (daughter of Lady Howard
de Walden), 360
Elliston, Guy, 218
Elsa, (head)' 378
English Girl, Any 179, 355
"cnguculing," 38-9
Enver, 84, 114, (first head) 367, (second
head) 369
Epping Forest, 73, 80, 97, 106, 131,
(paintings) 376
Epstein, Ghana, 9
—Hyam, 9
-Ida, 4
—Jacob, (large self-portrait-head in
storm cap) 360, (bearded head) 362
—Mrs., 21, 33, 88, 109, in, (bust, lean
ing on one arm) 357, (mask with long
ear-rings) 358, (bust, draped head and
shoulders) 361, (with band on hair)
361
—Jacob (of Baltimore), 367
-Louis, 4, 9
-Peggy-Jean, 63, 83, 113, 157-9, »77*
179, 200, (head at three months) 361,
(smiling, 14 months) jdi, (head, one
year) 362, (asleep, 18 months) 362,
(head, two years) 363, (head, two
years, called *Puttiw) |<% (bust, arms
out) 364, (bust, curly hair) 364, (bust,
laughing) 364, (bust, sad) 364, (bust,
7*/2 years) 369, (ag^cl 10) 370,
(eleventh bust) 377
Erskint9 De^M, 367
Estbtr, 319, 372, 374
i 199
INDEX
385
Eumorfopoulos Collection, 355-6
Euphemia, 355, (life size, draped), 356
Evening Standard, v, 306
Evening Standard and St. James Ga
zette, 25-6, 44, 217-25, 230-2, 236-7;
240, 254
Fame, 255
Feibelman, James Kearns, 369
Fenby, Richard, 103
Fcr argil Galleries, New York, 369
Figaro, 230
Fisher, Admiral Lord, 78-9, (bust) 358
Flaherty, Robert, 73, (head) 380
Flaubert, Gustavo, 257, 266
Flaxman, John, 312
Flenite, two carvings in, 357
Fletcher, Sir Frank, 377
Fleurs du Mai, Les, 142-9, 195, 380
Flower paintings, 379
Forain, 266
Forbes-Robertson, Sir Johnston, 108
Forgeries, Alleged, 109-114
Fort, Paul, 263
Fothergill, John, 22
Fox, William Henry, 124
Fredcricke, Madame, 111-12
Fry, Roger, 34
Gainsborough, 81
Galli, 257
Galsworthy, John, 96, 105
Gardiner, Prof. Percy, 168, 172
Gaudicr-Brzcska, 36, 49-51:, 54-5, 99-100,
201, 283
Gauguin, 103, 164, 195, 199
Qwtesis, 35, 93, 130-1, 145, 154, 184,
308-19, 310, 332, 347, 372
George VI, 31
George, Henry, 12
Gerrard) Mr$., 371
Gertler, 201, 113
Gertrude, 33
Gertrude, 355, (half length) 375
Gibbons, John, v
Gielgud) John, 374
Gelbcrt, Alfred, ju
Gil Bto, 157
Gill, Eric, 283
Gilman, Harold, 54, 201
Ginner, Charles, 54, 201
Girasole, 282
Girault, Charles, 257
Girl from Senegal, 82-3, (full bust) 363
Gitanjali, 84
Glasgow Art Gallery, 368
Goebbels, Dr., 343
Gogh, van, 104, 194, 335
Goldie, May, 372
Goldstone, Edward, 378
Good, Edward, 369
Goodhart-Rendell, H. S., v, 240-1
Goodyear, A. Conger, 357
Gordin, Jacob, 10
Gordon, Jan, v, 145
Gore, Spencer, 54, 201
Goupil Gallery, 50
Gourmont, R6my de, 45, 263
Goya, 60
Grand Bieri Head, 162
Grand jean, 257, 266
Grant, Mrs. Blanche, 72
Graphic, 237, 278, 280
Greco, el, 104
Greek Sculpture, 167-75
Green Mansions, 105, 290
Gregory, Lady, 33, (bust) 355
Greenwood, Joan, 157, (head) 372
Greenwood Lake, 13
Gray, Stuart, 102
Grey, Cecil, 95, 103, (bust) 363
Grief, 112
Grosz, 132
Group of Birds, 50
Guernica, 145, 147
Guido, 281
Guillaume, Paul, 121, 161, 163
GurdjiefT, 56
Gussow, Bernard, n, 13, 16
Haile Selassie, 73-5, 335-6, 349, (bust)
378
Halkett, G. R., 256
Halle, Hiram, 375
Hals, Franz, 59-60, 89
358
386
INDEX
Hamilton, Colonel, 326
Hamilton, Duchess of, 78-9, (full bust)
358
Hapgood, Hutchins, 10, 14
Hardy, Thomas, 61
Harris, Frank, 57, too
Harrow, L, V. R., 326
Hascltine, Philip, 103-4
Haskell, Arnold L., 335-6, 370
Head of an Infant, 354
Heath, Mrs., 373
Hegel, 279
Heinemann, William, Ltd., v
Helene, 362
Herckscher, E. J., no
Henry, 81
Herony, 73
Higginbothani, Marcus, 124-7
Hill, G. F., v, 240
—Sir George, v, 170-1
Hiroshigc, 120
Hirsch, Charles Henry, 257, 263, 266
Hitler, Adolf, 68
Hoot or, Harriet, 374
Holbrook, Joseph, 360
Holcomb, Arthur, 169, 172
Holden, Sir Charles, v, 24, 29, 128, 239,
244-7, *49i ***
Holmes, Charles J,, 27, 222, 224, 228,
*3*
Holroyd, Sir Charles, 218-9
Homer, Winslow, 8
Hopton Wood stone, 43, 254, 350*! 372
Hornstein, Nonmn, 379
Hotel Biron, 203
Houdon, 203
House of Commons, 320
House of Lords, 241
Household Words, 294
Howard de Walden, Lord, 299
Huberman, Leo,, 180
Hudson Memorial, 35, 80, 105, 178, 186,
288-09, J<x>> 3^7
Hueffer, Ford Madox, 53
Hugo, Victor , (Rodin's), 204
Hulme, T. E,, 38, 53-7, 271-7, 357,
(head) 358
Hunt, Holman, 278, 181
Hunter, Sergt. David Ferguson, V.C.,
361
Huysman, J, K., 230
Hygeia, 232
II Bracciatore, 236
Illustrated London News, 271
Imperial War Museum, 358-9
Ingres, 1 8
Injalbert, 257
Inness, George, 8
Intellectual Pride, 255
Irish Girl, 356
Isabel, (head) 375, (bust) 375, (first
portrait, bust) 376
Isobcl Po*wy$, 319
Israfel, 371, (bust) 373
Jackie, 157, 159-60, (first bust, one
year) 377, (second bust, one year)
377, (fifth portrait, four years) 380
Jackson, Holbrook, v, 105, 235, 299
James, Henry, 66
J arisen, Ellen, 373
Jcanncrat, Pierre, v, 145
Jerusalem, 282
Jessel, Robert, v, 336
JcunassG) La, 374
Joel) Betty, 371
John the Baptist, 286
John, Augustus K., 23, 80, 201, 299, 335,
(head and neck), 359
Johnson, Samuel, 53
Jones, Lady, 110-13
—Sir Roderick, no
Journal^ Le, 47
Journal ists, 176-81
"Journey Into Heaven," 324
Joy, Bruce, 195
Joy m Life, 232
Julian Academy, r8, 204
Kant, 278
Karlowska, Mmen 54, 201
Kathleen, 139, (butt) 363, (head) 364,
(bust, draped) 373, (bust, smiling)
374, (bust, half length) 378
Kerne; Mm D0w, 360
INDEX
387
Kessler, David, 11
Kibblewhke, Ethel, 38, 53, 56, in, 113
—Dora, 53
Kindler, Hans, 371
King, Tiger, 73, 324
King's Galleries, no
Knoedler Galleries, London, 369
Kolbe, 208
Korzeniowski, 64
Kramer, Jacob, 88, 95, (bust) 363
Kropotkin, Prince, 12
La Bells Juive, 371
La Bohemienne, (head and neck, cast
from first Dolores) 364
Lachaise, Gaston, 209
V Action de PArt, 256-8, 261, 265-7
Lady of Elche, 15
La Jeunesse, 374
Lajeunesse, Ernest, 265
Lamb, Euphemia, 33, (full bust) 356
Lancet,, 238
Lanchester, Elsa, (head) 366
Lane, Charles J,, 126
-Sir Hugh, 33-4
Lang, Dr. Cosmo Gordon, 26
Lankester, Sir Edwin Ray, 108
Last Supper , 282
Laurens, Jean Paul, 19
"la Vache a Colas," 268
Lavery, Sir John, v, 35, 46, 299
Lawrence, D. H., 54, 66
-T. E., Col, 62
—Thomas, 81
Laurencin, Marie, 203
Lazlo, 8 1
Leaves of Orass, (poem) 8; (sculpture)
122
Le B^au Navire, 143
Lecky, 279
Lccornu, 267
Legrand, Louis, 157, 266
L6gros, Alfred, 304-5, 312
Lehmbruck, 208
Leicester Galleries, 92, 97, 139, 150, 152,
279-80, 282, 284, 308-10, 313, 316-18,
324, 349, 355, 359-72
Leighton, Lord, 312
Leone, 378
Lepine, M., 47
Lepine-le-Ludibond, 261
Les Miserable*, 4
Lessin, n
Lewis, Wyndham, 53, 201
Limited Editions Club, 142, 380
Lincoln, 206
Linlathen Library, N. B., 367
Lipshitz, 164
Littman, Ethel, 377
Liverpool Exhibition, 109-10
Llewellyn, Sir William, 30, 240-1, 335
Lloyd George, David, 284
Locker-Lampson, Commander, 67-8, 74
London County Council, 27, 217, 237
Longer eau, 19
Lorain, Jean, 270
Lord Jim, 64
Lorieux, 257
Lourdes, 280
Louvre, 8, 14-15
Ludovici, A., 57, 274-6
Luigi, 86
Luke, St., 281
Luks, George, n
Lust, in
Lutyens, Sir Edwin, v, 251, 253
Luxembourg, 258
Luxury, 255
Lydia, 372, (second bust) 373, (laugh
ing, third, head) 376
McBride, William, 123-4
McCance, William, v, 153, 343, 349»
353
McEvoy, Ambrose, 76, 233, 299
—Mrs. Ambrose, 33, 355, (bust to
shoulders with medallion) 355
Macadam John, v, 344
Macaulay, 229
MacColl, Dr. D. S., v, 200, 231, 233,
297-8
Macdonald, J. Ramsay, 299, 349, (bust)
368, (second portrait, bust) 376
Maclagan, Sir Eric, v, 30, 240-1, 297
Macy, George, 142
Maeztu, Ramiro de, 53
388
INDEX
Marinctti, 52
Marsh, Sir Edward, 53
Madonna and Child, 89, 114, 118, 212,
Maillol, 147, 183, 202, 208
Maisky, 1 14
— Mme., 114
Mallarm6, Stephanie, 269
Man, 232
Alan of Ar an, 73, 324, (head) 376
Manchester, 243
—Art Gallery, 359, 368
—Courier ; 237
—Guardian, v, 29, 31, 115, 129-30,
237, 242, 244-5, 249, 291, 300, 303-5,
3*7
Manet, 335
Manson, J. B., v, 240
Mantegna, 347
M^r cells, 363
Marlborough, Duchess of, 85-6, (bust
with necklace) 360, (study for por
trait) 365
—Duke of, 85-6, 179, (study for portrait)
365, (half length robes) 367
Marriott, Charles, v, 283
Marshall, 175
Martin, Sir Alex, 377
—Hoiner, 8
Mary, (head) 373
Mary of Nmttreth, 326
Masaccio, 328
Maternity, 227, 232, 354
Matisse, i6x» 164, 196, 213
Matter, 231
Matthew, St., 281
Matthew, Harlcy9 360
Maugham, Judge (now Lord), no
May, Betty, 88, 100, (bust with arms
crossed) 362
Mayer, Robert, 378
Melville, Herman, 66
Mendes, Catulle, 257, 266
Meninsky, aoi
Mentality , 23 x
Mcnuhin, Yehudi, 180
Mercie, Anconfa, 157* 267
Meredith, 66
Mestrovic, 201, 284, 286
Metropolitan Museum (New York),
360
Meum, 77, (first bust) 359, (small
head) 359, (mask) 360, (with fan)
36x
Meyers, M. $., 376
Michelangelo, 14, 41, 96, 189, 207, 219,
276, 281, 294, 313-14
Middlesex Hospital, 377
Mijmska, Mile,, 369
Mill, John Stuart, 279
Millais, Sir John, 294
Milks, Carl, 202, 208
Mirbeau, Octave, 265
Mitchclcm, Lady, 76
Mithouard, 257
Moby Dick, 66
Modigliani, 38-41, 164, 177, 194, 213
Mona Lisa, 60
Montparnasse Cemetery, 258
Moore, Albert, 168
—George, 282, 299
—Henry, 164, 202
Morgan, lion. Evan, 359
Morna, 139, 378
Mtirmn% Post, 106-8, 184, 289
Morris, Dmid, 379
Mortimer, Raymond, v
Moscowitch, Morris, it
Mother md Child, (marble) 42, 357,
(granite) 359
Mozart, 193
Mullcr & Co., 281
Mannings, Alfred JM toH
Murray, Sir David, 108
Murry, J, Middtaron, v, aS|t 185
Musce Carnavalct, 257
Museum of Modem Art, 42, 161, 357
Mussolini, Bcnito, 53, 62
33, (dwpod) 355, (undraped) 355,
(head and neck) 356
Napoleon, 278^ 343
Nash, Paul, 147
Nation, v, 237, 183* ^85
National Academy of Design, 122
National Axe Collection Fund* 368
INDEX
389
National Gallery, 8, 152, 241, 281, 288,
294, 317, 322
-(Dublin), 355
—of British Art, see Tate Gallery
National Portrait Gallery, 80
National Vigilance Society, 218, 236
Nefertiti, 166
Nelson, 295
Neptune, v, 311
Nerenska, 139, 378
Never, 257
Nevinson, Henry W., 299
New Age, v, 53, 56-7, 177, 271
New bolt, Sir Francis, K.C,, 360
Newborn, 232
New English Weekly, v, 336, 348
New Guinea Group, 164
New Republic, 119
New Statesman, v, 146
New Testament, 8
New York Evening Post, v, 124-5
New York Museum of Modern Art,
42, 161, 357
New Yorker, 116
New York World's Fair, 05, 380
News Chronicle, v, 341
Nicmda, (head) 377
Nicolle, A. V., 374
Nidktt, Margaret, 30*0
Niemche, 274-7, 342
Nigger of the Narcissus, iz
Nighty see Day and Night
Nor em, 362
Notre Dame, 15
Novello, Ivor, 70
Oberammergau, 280
Observer, v, 47, 145, 237, 311, 317
Oko, Dr. Adolph S., 179, 369, (in
bronze) 366
—Mrs. (head) 377
-Pear/, 369
Old Pinager, 87, 179, (head and hands)
3*6
Old Smith, 87, (head) 365
Old Testament Drawings, 132, 143, 149,
*55
Olympia, 335
Omar Khayyam, 344
Orage, A. R., 53, 56-7, 72-3, 179
Orpen, Sir William, 299
Orvieto, 261
Ostrer, Isador, 71
Outlook, v, 282
Owen, Edmund, 219, 228
—Rev. Vale, 323-4
Oriel, (first bust) 368, (bust, looking
down) 369, (third bust) 373
Oyved, Moysheh, 83, (head) 369
Paderewski, 20
Paganini, 267
Pahouin, 162-3
Pall Mall Gazette, v, 47, 237, 255
Parliamentary Committee, 218
Parry, Sir Edward, 305
Parthenon, 171, 242
Partridge, Sir Bernard, 108
Pascal, 257
Pascin, 180
Patel, Miriam, 369
Paulding, Jarnes Kirk, 12
Peel, Viscount, 288
Peggy-Jean, see Epstein, Peggy-Jean
Pellcas et Melisande, 20
Pere Lachaise Cemetery, 44, 46,. 254-60,
*<$3, 2<55> 35<$
Pctt Level, 41, 101
Pheidias, 335
Phillips, Cecil, 282
-Sir Claude, 206
—Mrs. Godfrey, 370
Phyllis, (head) 373
Picasso, 38, 40, 145, 147, 161, 164, 196,
209, 336
Pickwick Papers, 113
Picture Post, v, 153, 349
Pierron, Sander, v, 311, 317
Pieta, 127, 314
PHchte, Miriam, (head) 363, (full bust)
319
Pola, 139, (bust) 379
Pollapjuolo, 261
Porte cPEnfer, 203
Porteus, Hugh Gordon, v
390
INDEX
Portland Stone, 239, 245-6, 297
Portrait, A, 370
Portrait of Dorian Gray, 265
Poulbot, 257, 266
Pound, Ezra, v, 36-7, 49-50, 53-4
Powell, L. B., v, 153, 156
Powys, hobelj 371
Prefect de la Seine, 259-61, 265, 267, 270
Pretoria, Transvaal, 265
Priestley, J. B., 60, 75-6, 349, (bust)
378
—Mrs., 76
Primal Energy, 232
Puech, Denys, 257, 267
Puget, Pierre, 267
Pugilist, A, 112
Pulitzer, R., 363
Punch, 232
Purple Land That England Lost, The,
105
Queensbury, Marquis oft 270
Quinn, John, 37, 357-8
Raebura, 8x
"Railway Accident," 21-4
Ranee Margaret of Sarawak, 108
Rcmkin, Marie (Irish Girl, first ver
sion), 354
Raphael, 96, 281
Raphael head, (Rodin's), 203
Ras Kassa, 73
Rastoumfit Ferosa, 366
Ratner, Joseph, 122
Rebecca, 372, 374
Reclining Qoddess, 373
Reclining Nude, 366
Reiily, Prof. C R, 299
Remade, Adrien, 264
Rembrandt, n, 60, 68, 70, 89, 94, 100,
120-2, 177, 191 (note), 199
Renan, 278
Renoir, 121
Restoration, 268
Rew& Bleuef 265
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 81
-Walter, 236-7
Reynolds'* Illustrated Weekly^ v
Rhodes, Cecil, 250
Richepin, Jean, 257, 266
Ricketts, Charles, 27, 225, 228, 236
Rima, 105-8, 289-90, 295, 298, 303, 335,
343
Ring, (Wagner's), 12
Rita, 379
Roberts, 102, 201
~~ Morley, 299
Robeson, Paul, 7, 56, 119-23, (head)
37^ ^
— Pauli, 123
Rochefoucauld, Viscomtc Sosth^ne de
la, 268
Rock Drill, 49, 274, (bronze) 357
Rodin, 14, 46, 57, 86, 202-5, 224? 2($7i
272, 282-3, 300, 322, 335
Roinard, Paul-Napoleon, 263
Roma, 374, (second bust) 375
Roman Catholic Universe, 343
Romilly, 354
Romilly, Rita, 120
Romney, 81
Rothcrmerc, Lord, 70-1, 319, (full bust)
370
Roualt, 336
Rousseau, Henri, 19
Royal Academy, 122, 201, 114, 240-1,
Royal College of Art, 199, 307
Royal Fine Arts Commission,
251-2,
Royal Institute of British Architects,
241, 297, 303
Royal Society for the Protection of
Birds, 105
Royal Society of British Sculptors, 35
Rubens, S6f in, 213
Rude, 203
Rud, Durand, 8
Ruskin, John, 1x3, a% 335
Ruthemon Collection! 365
Ryan, Sally, 115, (bust) 380
Ryder, Albert, 8
Ryner, Han, 263
**Sacrilegetn 325
Seth Oved, 374
INDEX
39I
St. Gaudens, 206
St. Paul's, 120, 242, 246
St. Peter's, 295
Salome, 265-6, 306
Samuel, Lord Herbert, 35
San Marco, Venice, 261
Sargent, 81, 86
Sassoferrato, 281
Savile Theatre, 242
Scheffer, Ary, 281
Schwab, Charles M., 70
Scotland Yard, 26, 218
Scott, A. T., 30
-C. P., 368
—Robert F., 92
—Stevenson, 89
"Scribe and the Sculptor, The," 237
Sculptor Speaks, The, 335, 339
Seated Nude, 356
Selina, 179, (full bust) 364
Selmersheim, 257
Seraph, The, 367
Shadow of the Cross, 281
Shaftcsbury, Gilbert, 297
Shannon, Charles, 27, 225, 228
Shaw, Bernard, v, 46, 60, 67, 72-3, 92,
106, 280-1, 299, 324, 376
—Mrs, 73
Sheila, 367
Shelley, Lillian, 99-100, (bust to waist)
362
-Percy B., 81
Shepherds Bush, 224
Sheridan, Clare, 76, (bust) 360
Shillito, Rev, Edward, v, 286
Sick Child, The, 370
Sickert, Richard, v, 238-41, 248, 335
—Walter, 201
Sistinc Chapel, 225, 261
Sitwell, 303
Slade School, 299, 304
Sloan, John, 11
Smith, Dr. Bernard, 168, 172
-Matthew, 34, 97, 135, 198, 201
Soem^ Mile. Qabridle, (full bust, dra
pery over shoulder) 363
Sorel, 53
South Kensington Museum, 152
Southern Rhodesian Government, 28-
32, 239-41, 244-6, 249-52
Spectator, v, 328
Speculations, 55
Speiser, Maurice J., 126, 335
Speldhurst Church, 281
Spencer, Stanley, 54, 201
Spinoza, 278
Spuller Monument, 265
Star, v, 331-4
Steichen, Edward, 124
Steinlen, 257, 266
Stevens, Alfred, 303, 312
—Cleveland, in
Steyn, Mrs., 357
Stonehenge, 249
Strachey, Lytton, 46
Strand Statues, 26-32, 44, 217-53,
354
Strange Man from His Cross, (Mes-
trovic's), 286
Strauss, Richard, 20, 278
Strindberg, August, 99
— Frida, 99
Sturmer, Der, 178
Subiaco Marble, 324, 328
Sun God and Gods, 372
Sunday Dispatch, v
Sunday Observer, 29
Sunday Pictorial, v, 320
Sunday Times, v, 31
Sunflower, 355
Sunita, 83-4, 114, (first head) 367, (bust)
367, (bust with arms and necklace)
368
Sutro, Mrs. Alfred, 361
Swan, John Macallan, 312
Swastikas, 108, 178
Swift, 230
Sydney, 85
Symon, Arthur, 272
Tagore, Rabindranath, 83-4, (bust) 368
Tailhade, Laurent, 45, 270
Tancred, 38
Tanya, 379
Tate Gallery, 33> 69, 8x, 97. "5. W*
152, 200, 209, 224, 355, 362-3, 368
39*
INDEX
Tatlock, R. R., v, 310
Tel- Aviv Museum, 83
Tennant, Hon. Stephen, 368
Terainia, 373
Tcrme Museum, 175
Thomas, (art teacher), 16
—Havard, 35, 202
-St., 286
Thorndyke, Sybil, 299, (bust) 368
Thorwaldscn, 333
Thurtle, Ernest, 299
Tillet, Ben, 299
Times (London), v, 26, 109, 140, 167-8,
170-1, 222, 226-8, 231, 239-40, 252, 291,
297-8, 346
Tin Hat,, The, 359
Tipping, H. Avray, 108
Titian, 121
Tiyi, 349* 37®
Tooth Gallery, 144-7, 37^> 379~^°
Toscanini, 188
Toulouse-Lautrec, 131, 199
Transfiguration, 281
Trcdegar, Lady, 80, 359
-Lord, 80
Tree, Jrfr, 359
Truth (periodical), v, 237, 334
Truth (statue), 317
Tunbridge Wells, 281
Turgenev, 12, 66, 94
Tussaud, Madame, 138
Tweed, 204
Two Arm, (marble, hands clasped)
Two DovcS) 357
Two Nature^ Thc9 206
Typhoon, 12
Underground St. James's Station,
Day and Night
Unwers®, v
Utrillo, 39
Vancouver Art Gallery, 364
Vanity Fair, 119
Vanor, Georges, 265
Van Vechten, Carl, 56, 119
Vassiliera, 38
Vaughan, Father Bernard, 92, 221, 230,
236, 278, 280-1
Velasquez, 213
Venus, 41, 359
—of Brassempuy, 316
— (Vatican), 228, 231
Venus Throne, 175
Verrocchio, 157, 213, 348
Vice, in
Victoria and Albert Museum, 240
Virginia, 370
Virgins, 281
Visitation^ T/JC, 97, 130, 368
Vlaminck, 161
Volpi, Count, 178
Von Uhde, 281
Vorwarts, 12
Wagner, 12
Wake, Byron S., 124-6
Walker, Sir Alexander^ 379
Walker Gallery, 109
Wall, A. C. /., 375
Walpole, Sir Hugh, 62, 299, 324, 362,
(head) 375
Warlock, Peter, 103
Warren, 175
Watson, Forbes, 123*4
Watte au, 273
Watts, George Frederick, 130, 312, 345
Wavertee, Lord, 109
Weatherhcad, Rev. Leslie l\ v, 334
Weekly Dispatch^ 344
Weeping Wwmn> The, 364
Weiwn&nn) Dr. Chahn, 376
Wellington, II, G*» 299, 307
Wells, !»!. G,f v, 46, 76
-Mr* and Mrs*, 13
Wkm W® Dead Aw$kmf ¥,57
Whistler, James McN*, 115, 203, 335
Whitney, Mrs, Harry Payne, 1 19
Wild^ Q$car» wml>> 19, 36, 38, 43-8, 55,
Wilcnski, E* H*, v, 306, 30, 317
Wttlette, 257, 263, z66
~~""liam$) Ewlyn, 374
•«rt RabM Stephen $.f (head) 380
* * , E G.f 70
INDEX 393
World) 237 Zed A9 370
Wyndham, Richard, 97 Zarate, Ortiz de, 38, 40, 208
Zobourovsky, 40
Young, George M., 124 Zola, Emile, 15
Young Communist, 139 Zorach, William, 117, 209
Youth, 232
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